Young Comrades
by Rennes
Summary: A tale of what happens to the first and second years after the third years graduate and leave them behind with holes in their heart...sort of...
1. The Survey

* * *

Er...the REAL beginning. ...yeah.;) I'll update for real soon.

* * *

**~oOoOo~**

* * *

"Why, I do believe we have set a new record for sitting around and doing absolutely nothing." Kamio said conversationally, lacing his fingers together.

"Indeed."

Shinji and Kamio sat outside the principal's office. Today was the first day of the semester for the two at their new school for their final year of junior high.

The school was called Suzuki, like the music book, Daiichi for the genius who had founded it. It had only been built two years before, but that had been time enough for its name to gain prestige all throughout the region. Every mother in Tokyo had scrambled to find the papers for her son, and convince him to transfer to that middle school, even if only for his final year in junior high.  
All the seniors from last year were gone but many students between ages twelve and fifteen from Tokyo middle schools had transferred, so it wasn't like _entirely_ closing a chapter of life. Shinji and Kamio had spent nearly all morning waiting for the principal to greet them, since paper work had to be finished first.

"I don't recall ever being so bored in my life." Kamio continued. "Not even while watching the match between Tezuka and Sanada in the finals."

"One would think that the principal had forgotten us." Shinji agreed.

"Why are we speaking in British accents? It's quite queer. I vote we stop immediately."

"But how will we amuse ourselves?"

"Don't worry about that. I'm sure we can come up with some totally arbitrary and unfunny was to pass the time. After all, characters on Naruto do it all the time."

"A fair point." Shinji took a sip of his tea, pulled a face and dumped the rest into the nearest flower pot. Unfortunately it wasn't a real flower and the tea squirted from the little holes in the sides and spilled on the floor.

They both stared.

"Should we get a janitor?" Kamio asked.

"Why admit your mistakes when you could hide them?"

They both shifted their foldout chairs to cover the spill. Then they were silent for a moment.

"Maybe we should have a scintillating conversation." Shinji finally suggested.

"I wouldn't know what to say."

"Then we could take turns asking questions on life, the universe and everything."

"That sounds awful. Why the hell not?"

Shinji nodded and thought for a moment. "Are you happy about attending this new school?"

"Impassive. I kind of wanted to be tennis captain at Fudomine but it's not a big deal." He frowned. "I wish it weren't an all-boys school though."

Shinji nodded. "But we're completely changing schools. I thought there would be more fanfare."

"Seriously. Where's the explanation? This is more of a copout than the thirteenth book in The Series of Unfortunate Events."

"Kamio." Shinji shook his head and suddenly looked very seriously at Kamio directly in the eyes. "_Nothing _in this universe is more of a copout than The End. I will never forgive Lemony Snicket."

"I told you not to get hooked on that series. Anyway, Harry Potter's way better."

"I don't like this conversation. Ask me a question about existence."

"I don't know!" Kamio felt too nervous about meeting the principal to play along. "How about you make a random comment so we'll have an excuse to change the subject?"

Shinji considered this. "Once I dreamt that the world was made of ice cream and everyone was served by penguins waddling around."

"What kind of ice cream?"

"Strawberry."

"Sweet."

"Yeah."

As if on cue, the door to the principal's office swung open and a short man poked his head out.

"I'm afraid I'm going to have to interrupt your awkward conversation to invite you into my office." He said.

Both boys sprang to their feet, immensely grateful for any change of scene. They entered through the door he held open for them.

The principal was a nondescript middle-aged-to-old man with square glasses, a gray suit, and a purple tie patterned, for some reason, with elves.

His office was relatively normal except for a poster on one wall depicting Harry Potter soaring on his broomstick, reaching out to catch the golden snitch. The rest was furnished with a rosewood desk, ashen blinds, and a potted tree in a corner.

"Alright?" He asked, as the two boys took seats before his desk.

Kamio found himself strangely shy even though he had been waiting to get in all morning.

"You two must be exceptionally tired of the hallway outside." The principal aptly noted. "I hope you weren't too bored. I had you provided with refreshments at least."

The boys thought back to the spill on the floor.

"Which school are you two from?"

"Fudomine." Shinji replied.

"You're lucky. He smiled strangely. "We have many transfers from that school this year so I'm sure you'll be reuniting with several friends shortly."

"Really? Who? Did Uchimura or Sakurai transfer?" Kamio started to get excited.

The principal shrugged. "I don't know. They don't always provide specific names if the they are minor characters. I just know that besides you two, there are four or five others."

"Definitely four or five? Not forty-five?" Shinji quipped.

No one got it.

Shinji looked down at his knees, embarrassed.

The principal plucked a speck of lint off his tie momentarily before continuing, "I won't go into all the details of this school right now for three reasons. First, because I don't feel like. Second, because I'm going to go over some basics anyway later when all the students arrive. And third because I think the best way to learn is the way you will: along the way, living here.

Unsure of what to say, the two boys stared at the principal. Somewhat irked that they weren't speaking, he abruptly said,

"Well, since you two are so early, you might as well fill out a little survey that I made especially for this year's incoming student body. It's to get an idea of what kind of students we will be dealing with; to assess the diversity. Or lack thereof. Please take your time, as we're in no hurry, and be honest, since it's anonymous anyway. Although I'll know which ones are yours since you'll be giving them to me directly." He added as an afterthought.

"What a way to put us at ease." Kamio muttered.

He continued, "The rest of the students will take it after Orientation and turn it in all together." Suddenly the principal smiled.

"What?" Asked Shinji suspiciously.

"Oh, nothing." He said, quickly shaking his head as if to clear his mind. "I was just thinking about how this is an Asian school, you know, with _Orientals_, and we're having _Orientation_ this evening."

Both boys died a little inside upon hearing this.

"Anyway, that will take place at five o'clock this evening."

"For real?" Kamio asked skeptically.

"What?" The principal looked confused. "Yes, of course for real. Things start on time here. We're not Koreans." He paused thoughtfully. "Or Indians."

To cover up the awkward silence that followed, the principal gave a short cough before hurriedly handing out to each of them a pen and a small packet of papers stapled together on a clipboard. Then he stepped back and repositioned himself at his desk.

Slightly unnerved that he was just going to sit there and _watch_ the two of them, Kamio glanced down at the papers, scanning the entire packet preemptively.

* * *

**The Survey**

**PART 1: GENERAL INFORMATION **

_**1. Name:** ______________________________________________________

_**2. Age:** ______

_**3. Previous school:** _____________________________________

_**4. Best Subject:** ________________________________________

_**5. Worst Subject:** _______________________________________

_**6. Hobbies:** ____________________________________________________

_____________________________________________________________  
_____________________________________________________________

**_7. Do you play tennis?_ **(Check yes or no)

yes __ ⁬ no__ ⁬

*If you answered "no" to question 7, skip questions 8 to end.

_**8. Singles or Doubles? Usually?** _(Circle one)

**PART 2: SEMI-LONG ANSWER** (check all that apply in each category)

**_9. What are your special moves? _**(Cirlcle all that apply)

a. Triple counters  
b. Flippy/Bendy-ness  
c. Genius...ness  
d. Billowy white smoke appears when seriousness starts  
e. Imitating people. As in turning into them?  
f. Awesome serves  
g. Super Special Smashes  
h. Extraordinary speed  
i. Data Collecting  
j. Blind Play  
k. Cosplaying  
l. Somehow having the ability to combine tennis with skills from completely random other sports  
m. Doubles Techniques  
n. Using the natural elements to advantage  
o. Ambidexterity  
p. Ability to "distinguish" moving objects well {oh _wow_, you must be the only person who can do _that_}  
q. Devil or Angel Modes  
r. Super high stamina  
s. Killer Volleys  
t. Unreasonable luck  
u. Ridiculous power shots that no human middle schooler could _actually_ do  
v. Defense Tactics  
w. Ability to incapacitate senses of the opponent  
x. Might as well  
y. Finish the  
z. Alphabet!

**_10. What is your motivation for playing tennis? _**

⁬- To fulfill a childhood dream that has existed since before person could talk/etc  
- To please an incredibly inspirational coach or player that talked person into it  
- Nothing better to do  
- Failed at soccer, basketball, swimming, and every other non-toolish sport  
- Forced by a parent  
- To defeat an older brother/sister/father/cousin  
- To follow through with the ideals of a school revolution  
- To prove that person can do something right  
- To explain, unrelentingly, during matches, what a more important character's moves are, how they were developed, and how powerful they are, etc.  
- To

**_11. What do you think of Echizen Ryoma? _**

⁬- He's awesome XD  
- He's okay  
- Who?  
- He's a tool  
- He's uke  
- Tezuka should slap him again  
- He'll never be a pillar  
- He's lame  
- His fondness for Karupin is...unnatural  
- Mada mada dane [that's not even an answer!]

**_12. Have you ever had a life changing match? _**

⁬ - Yes, it totally reformed my way of tennis player  
- No  
- I'm too cynical to be changed by a tennis match  
- Yes, but then I was never given screen time again

**PART 3: FREE RESPONSE** (answer in complete, thoughtful sentences, carefully elaborating on points that may seem completely mundane. Special attention will be paid to use of motifs, symbolism and character evolution)

_13. Have you ever said: "I'll definitely win", only to have your ass kicked by a more important character moments later? _

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________  
_

_14. State and explain the meaning of your catchphrase, which you undoubtedly have. _

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________  
_________________________________________

_15. Do you find it strange how the writers make it seem like Freshman are so terrorized by upperclassmen when that's actually hardly even true anymore? _

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________  
_________________________________________

_16. Does it annoy you how sometimes the opponent will just stop mid-game and explain, in great detail, everything that he just did and why you can't **possibly **defeat it? _

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________  
_________________________________________

_17. In__ the space provided below, make a list of every single life-changing event that has ever happened to you. Then choose one or two to elaborate on, specifically detailing how it helped you develop your tennis career. Extra credit will be given for flashbacks. _

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________  
_________________________________________

_

* * *

  
_

Kamio finished reading and shot a look of disbelief to Shinji. Shinji however, didn't appear to have noticed and was busily filling out the form. Kamio sighed and turned back to his own paper. The first twelve questions were reasonably easy, though he was disappointed that "tenacity" hadn't been included in the special skills section. Probably it was so generic that it didn't even count as special anymore.

He was slightly stumped by question 14. "I'm riding the rhythm." 'What does it mean?' The question asked. _What does it **not **mean? _Was Kamio's first reaction. But then he had to think about it seriously, having never really asked himself. The words individually made sense, but altogether the meaning actually _was_ pretty ambiguous. _"Riding" seems to take the meaning of "being engulfed within" in this sentence. _Kamio thought._ So does that mean I'm lost in the music? What does that even have to do with tennis? I don't listen to music while I play._  
And for the first time it dawned on Kamio that perhaps his trusty catchphrase was complete bullshit. Feeling rather shaken, he lifted his pen and began to write out a long, well thought out response to the question, concluding with his realization that he ought to get a new catchphrase.

To Kamio's left, Shinji was thoroughly enjoying writing about what he thought of Echizen though, even adding a few personal comments.

Unfortunately, Kamio spent so much time on 14 that by the time he finished it, Shinji had already finished the entire survey and handed it in, so he felt pressured to finish quickly. He scribbled down some meaningless answers for the rest of the questions, being forced to write about the match against Kaidoh for the last question because he couldn't think of anything better on the spur of the moment.

The principal looked amused at Kamio's discomfort and dismissed both of them after filing away the surveys in a cabinet behind his desk. He told them that they were roommates and should visit the dorm rooms to get settled in somewhat. Failing that, five hours remained to check out the campus before the evening's orientation.

* * *

**oOoOo**

* * *

A Saga Born.


	2. Unwelcome Classmates

Before Orientation

* * *

**~oOoOo~**

* * *

"Well, I _would_ suggest that we have another conversation but apparently that doesn't really work for us," Shinji commented as he and Kamio strolled across the Suzuki campus, which was slowly beginning to fill with other students their age, milling about.

"Should we try to find something fun to do?"

"Never works."

There was silence.

"All right, this is getting ridiculous!" Kamio declared, petulantly pulling out the bud headphone that been nestled in his ear. "We're good friends, Shinji, and nothing is going to change that, but we're at a new school now and most likely there won't be anyone else from Fudomine in our dorm. We're going to have no choice but to get to know our classmates eventually."

"What are you getting at?" Shinji raised one eyebrow.

"We're going separate ways!" Kamio declared. "I'm not talking to you for the rest of the day and you're not talking to me. We split up and scout. We each act charming as hell and meet new people. At the end of the day, we'll each have new friends. Got it?"

"This sounds like the prelude to a really awkward chapter," said Shinji.

"Very perceptive." Kamio began to walk away from Shinji, turning his head to call back, "I mean it, Shinji! Don't come near me until the orientation! Be sociable!"

"Why are you doing this? Where am I supposed to go? What will I do?" Shinji called back.

"Frankly, Shinji, I don't—"

"Okay, okay, I get the point! Just not another literary reference!" And Shinji turned _his_ back on Kamio, figuring that, if nothing else, he could go to the cafeteria and eat cake until five o'clock.

**XxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXx**

Kamio felt rather excited about meeting new people. Unfortunately, being roomed with Ibu probably meant that he would be spending half of his time prying the other out of the room and convincing him to socialize, but he could still take some initiative now, without qualms about ditching his best friend.

Kamio stopped walking and scanned the campus, wondering where would be the jackpot as far as finding friends was concerned. He considered going into the cafeteria to get cake, but then he figured that that was probably where Shinji was and it would be too ironic. So instead, he headed for the library, hoping that there would be students ready to socialize.

The library, having not yet officially opened for the new school year, held several students, just as Kamio had hoped. There seemed to be some sort of educational young-writers session thing going on in one of the study rooms, but Kamio didn't bother looking in, since he thought writers were overrated. Somewhat less confidently than before, he slowed his gait to check out the other students. Many were chatting in clods, but here and there a loner would appear, and Kamio knew that was his best bet. He spotted a boy that he half recognized from Naruto, with very long dark brown hair sitting at one of the study tables, reading a book. Sidling over, he took a seat and said, "Hey, I'm Kamio!" Are you new to this school also?" The boy across the table raised his head slowly and revealed a set of perfectly pearly, white eyes.

Kamio jumped slightly, but tried to get his shock under control.

"…How's it going, man?" he tried weakly.

"About as well as trying to read without pupils _can_ go, I suppose," he said in a deadpan voice.

_God. Why do I only attract weirdos?_

Kamio smiled vaguely, unsure of whether or not to laugh. If it was a joke, it would be rude not to, but if it wasn't, he would offend the other boy terribly.

After trying to strike up a conversation a second blind person, and then a _third_, and then wrapping up the whole fiasco by accidentally entering the young writers session and discovering it was actually a convention for the blind, Kamio decided that he would be better off as far from the library as possible. For a good long time, too.

The moment he stepped back out into the sunshine and wondered what to do, he heard a loud, obnoxious voice call, "Kamio-kun!"

_Excellent, a friend!_ Thought Kamio somewhat crazily. He spun around, ready, putting on his friendly smile to greet whoever had called.

And found himself face to face with Kirihara.

**XxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxX**

**Meanwhile….**

Shinji felt uncomfortable. Four pairs of eyes were currently fastened on him, observing as he finished his cake. Shinji had thought that the cafeteria would be a quiet place to pass the time, but upon entering, he had run into the freshman trio plus Aoi from last year, all of whom were apparently attending this school as well.

Katsuo broke the silence.

"Could you show us how to do your Kick Serve?"

"Mmhh?" Shinji raised an eyebrow, his mouth full.

"It doesn't have to be right now!" Said Aoi breathlessly. "Whenever you have some time."

Shinji swallowed. "Why don't you guys ask Echizen to show you some moves?"

"He's over us." Admitted Horio sadly. "Doesn't really want to hang out anymore."

"Seriously. He's gotten all snobby since last year." Kachiro agreed, shaking his head. "The whole winning the final match against Yukimura went to his head."

"Well, Yukimura _is_ the 'Child of God'." Shinji pointed out. "So it was pretty cool."

"What's that even supposed to mean?" Katsuo asked, frowning. "How can a middle school player be the 'Child of God'? Does that make him, like, Jesus with a tennis racket or something?"

"Anyway," Aoi cut in, "Echizen decided that since he's the Prince of Tennis and all, he's too cool for us."

"What do you mean, 'us'?" Shinji gazed bewilderedly at the former captain of Rokkaku. "You weren't even his friend!" Then he paused to think about that more. "On that note, what are you even _doing_ here?"

"I needed some groupies." Aoi muttered, flushing and looking down at the table. "And I don't know where David is, so I thought I should seek out the other Freshmen…"

"But back to the point!" Horio said, focusing his eyes on Shinji. "Will you teach us? Huh? Will you?"

"Guys come on…" Said Shinji awkwardly. "You know that Echizen hasn't really abandoned you. If you try to replace him so suddenly, you'll regret it—

"No, we won't!" The freshman trio shouted in unison. Even though they were officially second years now, nobody cared. They would always be the freshman trio.

"It's _you_ that we want." Katsuo pressed.

"It's _you_ with the Spot Technique." Horio added.

"It's _you_ who gave everyone in fandom what they wanted—to see Echizen bleed!" Kachiro screamed.

Shinji began to back away slowly into a wall.

**XxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxX**

Incensed seemed like a nice word to describe how Yuuta felt. Not only had his entrance into the story been completely cut out, but he was stuck with his brother at the new school! What the hell was the writer thinking?

Syuusuke had kindly offered to help Yuuta move in despite the latter's vehement protests. After transferring his possessions to the main entrance hall, Yuuta had said that he wanted to check out his new room and organize, but Syuusuke had offered to help him unpack. Then Yuuta tried to casually lose him in the crowds that were checking out the sports facilities but that had failed, and then he had said he needed to go to the bathroom, but knowing his older brother, Yuuta knew Syuusuke would probably follow him in there as well. In the end, the solution had been quite simple though. The pair were checking out the gardens and there, Yuuta had an incredible stroke of luck. Two finches were mating on a tree branch and Syuusuke got very interested and stopped to watch, giving Yuuta a time slot to back away and then sprint off.

When Yuuta felt that he was at a safe distance, he slowed down to catch his breath and quickly analyzed his new surroundings. It would not take Syuusuke long to tire of the birds, he knew. He needed to act now, and fast. Yuuta took off in the direction of the cafeteria, hoping to find someone he knew to help him escape.

**XxX**

Just as Yuuta's hand touched the door to the cafeteria, it burst open. Out sailed a harassed looking Shinji.

"Hey—" Yuuta began, half-recognizing him from the Senbatsu camp, but Shinji merely grabbed him and dragged both of them into a clump of bushes overshadowed by a tree, several meters away from the entrance to the cafeteria.

"What's going o—" Yuuta tried.

"Shhhhhhhh!" Shinji frantically silenced him. Then he pointed to the doors of the cafeteria. From their hiding place in the bushes, they could quite clearly see the freshman trio and Aoi come out. The four of them paused, looked around, and spoke to one another in hushed voices. Then they all headed off in the direction of the administration building.

Shinji let out a long, slow sigh of relief and Yuuta understood. Apparently he wasn't the only one avoiding people. Yuuta turned to his new confidant.

"My brother is after me." He said simply, in a searing voice. "We have very little time. He's sure to have tired of the birds by now. Do you know where would be a good place to hide?"

"I just got here, too." Shinji muttered, still eying the direction that the Freshman had walked off in warily. "I don't know the ins and outs yet. We'll have to use the sprint and dodge technique."

"Better than nothing."

Both boys got up cautiously. Actually, only Shinji got up cautiously. Yuuta got up way too fast and rammed his head against a low-hanging branch of the tree they were under and collapsed in a heap. When the black spots in his vision had cleared, the two of them sprinted back towards the cafeteria, and buried themselves in the shade of the building, pressing their bodies against the stone wall. They sidestepped around the perimeter of the building Pink Panther style, keeping their eyes watchful for anyone.

"We'll have to be very careful," Yuuta said evenly, trying to keep his voice under control. "My brother is a master of deception and very clever and he's surely looking for me right now."

**XxXxXx**

Yuuta was right in guessing that his brother had finally noticed his absence, but he was wrong about Syuusuke chasing him.

In reality, Syuusuke had now gotten distracted by two _crows_ mating on a telephone pole.

**XxXxXx**

Kirihara had a perfectly logical reason for hailing down the single person who hated him the most on the campus, including Syuusuke. He really did. He just wasn't sure what it was yet.

Now Kamio was in a situation strikingly similar to that of Shinji and Yuuta: how to lose this guy?

Kirihara frowned slightly. "Perhaps my instinct deceives me…" He said, "But it seems that you are not very happy to see me."

Kamio turned away and started to walk in the direction of the Music Center, "I don't want to talk to you."

"Aw." Kirihara covered his chest with both hands. "You're breaking my heart."

"Like you have one."

"Ouch."

"Quit following me."

"No."

"Quit."

"No."

"Simon says 'quit'."

"Well, alright...hey, wait!" Kirihara snapped his fingers, laughing dryly. "You almost got me that time!"

_Damn, I thought I had him for sure. He's gotten smarter. _Kamio angrily brooded. "Why are you following me?"

"I…don't know. I just somehow felt compelled to bother you. Like the continuation of the plot depended on it or something."

"…"

"I somehow remember you being more…expressive than this. Are you quiet because you're desolate you had to leave your Ann-_chan_?" Kirihara's voice held an edge of menace.

Silence.

"Why did the chicken cross the road?"

Silence.

"Goddam it! No plot, no romance, no humor…what the hell is this, _Naruto_?"

Of course, at that exact moment, the boy that Kamio had spoken with in the library passed the two of them and shot them a glare upon hearing these words. Kamio cringed.

"Mind leaving me the hell alone? I don't want everyone in this school to hate me before the term even begins."

"With your temper I think that's inevitable." Kirihara said in a smug voice.

Kamio's pulse jumped but he was determined not to prove Kirihara right, so he just quickened his pace to try to lose the other boy.

"Wait up, Kamio-kuuun. You can't leave me! We haven't fulfilled our part yet!"

"Go screw yourself."

"I've tried, it's boring. Listen, let's just _do_ something so that we can get it done quicker and then this will be over!"

It made sense in a weird way.

Kamio entered the music building. For a moment, they were both astonished, taking in the seemingly endless corridor with countless doors. Peering behind one, Kamio discovered a huge amphitheater. Each room was filled with musical instruments, classified by sound group.

"This is neat." Kamio mused aloud, temporarily distracted.

"Yeah, if your name is Suzuki Daiichi." Kirihara agreed.

Kamio shot him a cold look and continued on without him.

"Okay, sorry about that one." He conceded.

The two walked in silence for a few moments. Kamio stared at the array of string instruments longingly from behind a glass door. Kirihara waited, but Kamio didn't seem likely to move. He clicked his tongue loudly.

"I didn't ask you to come!" Kamio snapped.

"Yet here we are. And something tells me this afternoon will be long, Kamio-_chan._"

That did it. Without so much as a backward glance, Kamio exploded running for it.

"Oh great." Kirihara cursed his inability to control himself. He would have preferred to just leave, but the continuation of the plot depended on him, he ran after Kamio.

Kamio raced to the nearest open door, in this case, the entrance to the strings room and dove in, locking himself inside.

"Oh come on!" Kirihara stopped running and pounded on the door with his fists. "Come out! Not cool!"

**XxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxX**

At this point, most characters that matter were just desperately praying for five o'clock.

The Freshmen were poking around the administrative buildings, looking for Shinji. Shinji and Yuuta were concealed in a large group containing an assortment of Fudomine and St. Rudolph friends that they had found, slowly moving south, trying to avoid the Freshmen. Shinji also knew he had to avoid Kamio, who was avoiding Kirihara.

Everyone was avoiding Syuusuke.

Said tensai was currently prowling around the outskirts of the science building. Every now and then he would rub his fingers into the brick of the building, examine the dust on his fingers, smell it, and then head off in a new direction, as if he suddenly had a lead as to where Yuuta was.

**XxXxXx**

Shinji had suggested that they visit the pool area and the locker rooms. Yuuta agreed, thinking that if he took a quick shower or jumped into the pool, he could throw his brother off the scent.

Currently, the pack of them, (that is to say, Shinji, Yuuta, and their extraneous buddies) were creeping toward the athletics area, trying to look casual, but at the same time, trying to stick together. If they could just make it to that little squat brick building, they would be safely swaddled in shadow for a while.

They inched forward. The corner of the building on the far end drew closer. _Just some more…..that's it……..just a little more…..._

"GOTCHA!" Syuusuke jumped out of a tree that he had apparently been perching in, right into the center of the group of boys, perfectly landing on his brother. That damn tensai! How had he figured out that the only way to find Yuuta would be through an areal view?

"What's all this now?" Asked Syuusuke as his brother thrashed like a dying fish. "I was expecting more of a fight out of you, Foolish Little Brother." He savored feeling like Itachi for a moment. "It's obviously much too early for you to defeat me."

The rest of the boys recovered from the shock and Shinji found himself pitying poor Yuuta. "Aw, let him go." he said, surprising himself. "You don't even belong here. You're old."

_Oh my God._ Yuuta thought he might pass out. _No one_ spoke to Syuusuke like that and survived. Once there had been a boy who thought he could speak to Syuusuke like that. Now he was not there anymore.

What had Shinji gotten himself into? As Syuusuke surveyed Shinji and slowly got to his feet, Yuuta shut his eyes and begged God for an earthquake.

...

...

...

…And for the second time that day, Yuuta's prayers were answered.

Just as Syuusuke opened his mouth to speak, the ground gave a sharp convulsion. It was not too serious, but it was enough to shock Syuusuke out of his rage. Chaos ensued.

"Now don't worry kids!" Syuusuke ordered, though there was an edge of fear in his voice. "I'm the adult here! I know exactly how to handle this kind of situation!"

"RUN!" screamed Ichiuma and all the boys scattered like fallen marbles.

Syuusuke looked slightly annoyed, but admitted, "That was what I was going to say anyway."

"Ibu, come ON!" Shouted Yuuta, grabbing Shinji by his shirt, for it seemed that the other boy was petrified and could not run.

"What…_is_ this?" Shinji whispered in a cracked voice, staring at Yuuta.

"_**A gift from God!" **_Yuuta bellowed. "And He will be very displeased if we don't use it! Now COME ON!" Yuuta saluted the heavens and bolted. The two of them ran, leaving Syuusuke feeling as though he had been somehow set up.

The earthquake was over in less than a minute. Yuuta and Shinji stopped, having completely lost Syuusuke and utterly out of breath.

**XxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxX**

Kamio cautiously opened his eyes. He found himself in a strange position, with his head on Kirihara's legs. He sat up quickly and pulled a Yuuta, banging his head against Kirihara's.

"Ouch! What the hell happened?" Kamio rubbed a spot on his head that was throbbing immoderately.

"There was an earthquake. A guitar fell from one of the shelves and hit you on the head, knocking you out," said Kirihara sourly. "I basically saved your life."

"I don't remember that."

"I told you to come out and you thought that it was _me_ shaking the building! You thought it was a joke and refused to come out! You _seriously_ don't remember that?" Kirihara screeched.

"I really didn't believe that it was a real earthquake?" Kamio said. "Well _that's_ kind of ironic. Though it still doesn't explain how you got in here."

"Did I have choices? I shouldered down the door."

"Well, whatever, let's get out of here," said Kamio, getting to his feet. "If it really was an earthquake, then at least _we_ won't be blamed for the mess in here."

"Kamio."

"What?" Near the door, Kamio turned.

Kirihara pointed to his left foot, which was lodged in a guitar. "I'm stuck."

**XxXxXxXXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxX**

Choutarou and Kabaji watched happily from the picnic blanket they had set up on the front lawns, enjoying ice cream as they did so. Hiyoshi, who was sitting with them, had fallen asleep in the sun. Choutarou smiled.

"Kabaji, aren't you glad that we didn't try to branch out and meet new people?"

"Usu."

* * *

~oOoOo~

* * *

revised


	3. A Nice Little Introduction

* * *

**~oOoOo~**

* * *

At long last, five o'clock came and everyone gathered in the Performing Arts Theatre for the official orientation.

The room was large and circular, with navy blue curtains shrouding a mahogany stage at the front and several fold-out tables erected in the back.

The principal stood at the front of the room, but not on the stage, holding a microphone and watching as the students filed in. He wore an amicable smile, but Kamio and Shinji knew not to be deceived by appearance.

Finally, after the P.A.T. was mostly full, he gestured for the teachers stationed at the doors to shut them. The teachers obeyed immediately, slamming the doors shut in the faces of a few astonished students who had arrived late.

The principal waited until the curious buzz had died down before speaking.

"Another year…begun!" he proclaimed.

A few students sniggered at the thinly veiled Harry Potter reference. Or maybe they were sniggering at his tie, which Kamio noted, had not been changed from that morning.

"Can I talk without this?" The principal suddenly asked, pointing at the microphone. "There's really nothing that I hate more than listening to my own voice magnified." Seeing a few nods of assent, he turned off the microphone and put it on the stage. He started to pace the front of the room.

"Before I begin, I would like to address the event that probably made deep impressions on the young lives of many of you. I'm sure that several students in this room have been changed forever."

Everyone leaned forward, excited.

"There was an earthquake this afternoon."

There was silence.

"…_that_ was your big reveal?" Kirihara asked finally.

The principal frowned. "Maybe some people didn't notice." He said defensively.

"Who doesn't notice _ground shaking_?"

"You are grating my credibility. Please do not speak while I do."

Kirihara shrugged and reclined in his seat.

The principal looked annoyed. "_Like_ I was saying, there was an earthquake earlier this afternoon. Can't be helped. School was not even in session yet, so I didn't expect you younglings to know what to do. It's a shame that it happened before we got to the earthquake drill lecture, which occurs later in the year."

Many people audibly groaned and began making plans to get out of it.

"Nevertheless, there have been no injuries either to students or to the campus, other than some debris. The Suzuki Daiichi uses the most modern architecture and thus I'm sure you will all feel very safe while on this campus. Not a single one of our buildings was damaged! That's why we decided to proceed with this afternoon's introduction!" The principal spoke as if this were some sort of personal accomplishment on his part.

"Now, I'm sure that many of you were very frightened, but as you see, there has been no serious or lasting damage. Please try to contain your nerves."

Several boys began to nod off.

The principal seemed to notice this, and decided to drop the subject.

"On a brighter note," he began, "this year's entering class is one of the biggest in the history of this school."

"That isn't really saying much if you consider that this school has only been open two years." Shinji muttered.

The principal went on. "I know that the reputation of Suzuki Daiichi has spread quickly in the region, which is probably why so many of you sit here today: students who transferred as second or third years. Your family wanted you to get the best education possible. And they were absolutely right!"

He smiled genially. "Suzuki Daiichi is known for it's excellence in both academics and athletics. The staff have been carefully chosen and trained to maximize the learning experience. The environment is safe, focused, and positive. In other words, you're going to love it here whether you like it or not. If you ever have any problems that you can't sort out with other students, the staff, your family, or hell, even with yourself, feel free to contact me or any of the three counselors that are here to help." He gestured to three ferocious looking women who were standing near the exits and who looked like they would disembowel the first student who asked for help.

"Is he allowed to say 'hell'?" Aoi whispered to Kaidoh.

"I don't think there's any need for me to go into the speech about safety on the campus." The principal continued. "Any trouble makers will be…dealt with. Anyhow, the safe schools speech is so overused, I'm sure you all know it by heart without me telling you. You would rather I skipped the part about not bringing guns and such and got to the good parts."

"Hear, hear!" Hooted Momoshiro.

The principal looked momentarily pleased. "A few last things to go over. There will be no problems with the dress code, I think, since you are all used to uniforms. Essentially, the rules are all common sense. Try as hard as you can in all of your classes. Don't act up. Don't attempt to handle the facilities that you don't understand. Treat other students and your teachers with respect."

He paused and then gestured to the tables set up at the back of the P.A.T.

"You have all been sorted into dorms. Each table represents a dorm, and there is a list of the students in it above each table. Check to see which dorm you are in, and then at the tables you will see the breakdown of roommates, if you haven't already. There are teachers at each table, so feel free to ask any questions that you felt too awkward to ask in front of everybody else."

The principal got up, walked over to the tables and sat down at one of them that didn't already have a teacher monitoring it. He stared at the students for a few moments.

"Oh—you can go!" He said, realizing why no one was moving.

There was an instant stampede as a couple hundred boys rushed to the back of the room.

Kamio had his toes stepped on several times, got elbowed in the face, and thought he might have felt someone make a grab at his ass as he made his way to the back. He instantly spotted the table with his name listed above it. It was the one the principal had seated himself at.

In surprise, he noted that he recognized many of the other names on the list. In fact, it seemed that nearly everyone that he had been in tennis that he knew from last year was in the dorm. Groups of old students from Fudomine, St. Rudolph, Seigaku, Rokkaku, Yamabuki, and Hyoutei loped into the general vicinity.

Kamio felt arms encircling his neck and considerable weight on his back.

"I'm glad we're together, Kamio-_kun_."

He should have known it was Kirihara.

"Get—off!" He hissed, struggling to breath.

"Hey, you're in here too?" David had arrived.

"Apparently." Said Kamio and Kirihara at the same time. Then they both waited.

"…what? Do I have to make a pun out of _everything_?"

At that point, Shinji showed up to greet his friends also, though it may have partially just been in an effort to put some distance between himself and the principal. "I stayed away from you the whole afternoon." He reminded Kamio. "Did it have the desired effect?"

"I'm proud as hell, but no."

"I should have known. Listening to you is like watching an Indian drama. It all seems logical at the time, but then in the end it's completely stupid and pointless." Shinji sighed, and addressed everyone. "Did you guys at least have a good afternoon?"

"No." They chorused. The only good thing that had happened to any of them since the morning was that Syuusuke had finally gotten bored around four o'clock and left the campus.

"Well, were your entrances good?"

"No, mine sucked." Yuuta said moodily. "It was a double with my brother!"

"At least you _had_ one!" Kirihara said. "I practically just came out of nowhere."

"Will you all quit whining?" David asked. "Don't laugh, but I _just_ got here!"

Everyone laughed at him.

"It's not _funny!_ I'm off puns until I get some retribution!"

"Fat chance." Kamio ran a hand through his hair, his mood somewhat lightened. "Hey_...you_ two!" He suddenly said in shock, noticing Momoshiro and Kaidoh, who had sauntered over.

"Yeah, we're stuck here too." Said Momoshiro. "No one was left unscathed. Not even the Prince of Tennis."

"Where _is_ Echizen?" Kirihara asked, looking around.

Momoshiro shrugged. "Dunno. We arrived together this morning, but I haven't seen him since he went to the bathroom three hours ago."

"Don't you care what happened to him?" Shinji asked incredulously.

"Well, he should have been more careful." Grumbled Kaidoh. "Especially knowing how he is with directions. But the only thing bigger than Echizen's idiocy is his _ego_."

David looked shocked.

"Eh, he'll be fine." Momoshiro assured. "Even if it takes all night, he'll find his own way back rather than ask for directions. Because the only thing bigger than his _ego_ is his _pride_."

"'Ego' and 'pride' mean the same thing, dumbass." Kaidoh hissed.

"All here?" The principal neatly interrupted, calling to the group in front of his table. "You kids sure are noisy."

"Your _tie_ is noisy." Said somehow hidden in a knot of boys. Several others expressed agreement.

"Is this how you were taught to treat your elders?"

"Sorry, but he _did_ get you there, sir." Choutarou said in a tremulous voice.

"I can't believe I'm listening to this." The principal sighed. Shinji and Kamio could see his former nature reappearing.

"We're just going to get this over with. Check out this listing for your roommates."

He dropped a paper on the table and a few boys leaned over to check it out.

"Kawamura Sushi now serves—" Shinji began to read.

"Give me that!" exclaimed the principal, snatching back the paper, fumbling around in his briefcase, and finding another sheet.

"For anyone that is actually interested, here is the _real_ list of the roommates. You may meet up and proceed up to your rooms and settle in if you haven't already." He flourished the list out at them, sliding it across the table where all the boys crowded around to read it.

**Roommates: Naruto Building **

What's with the name of our dorm? asked Yuuta.

"Ah, yes." The principal smiled. "Each of our dorm buildings is named after an anime, and then we sort students into each building depending on what the anime _they_ come from most resembles."

"Does that mean that most of the people in our building will be from Prince of Tennis?" Choutarou ventured.

"You bet."

"I thought the _point_ of a new school was to mix up students so that we have a _variety_ of friends." Hiyoshi complained.

"That's your problem, son." Said the principal cheerfully. "I thought it would be more funny if we segregated athletes, intellectuals, magicians, warriors, ninja, and random people with no identifying characteristics, so that's the way it's going to be. It's up to you to make friends. In each of the roommate pairings we did try to at least mix up the schools though."

Realizing there was no point arguing with him, the students sighed and looked down to read the roommate listings.

**1. Kamio[Fudomine]**_**-**_**Ibu[Fudomine]**

"Oh yeah. Way to mix up the schools." Said Ishida.

"That's the _only_ one!" the principal shouted. "And you know what?" he suddenly aimed at Ishida. "Just for that, you're out of this story."

"What? You can't kick me out!"

"Leave."

"This is ridiculous! I paid for this school!"

"I paid for this tie! Doesn't mean someone can't take it away from me! You get out this instant. Not only are you out of this school, but I will be having a little conversation with your parents."

"But—"

"Security."

Two huge men came and grabbed Ishida, dragging him out of the entrance hall as easily as if he were a paper doll. No one saw him again.

"Any other comments?" the principal asked.

No one said a word.

"Excellent. It's really too bad for him, but as you can see, we have a code of conduct here at Suzuki. For a more detailed articulation of what is and what is not acceptable, feel free to check the list I have attached with scotch tape to the notice board in the mess hall."

The students gulped and returned to the roommate listings.

**2. Kirihara[Rikkaidai]-Fuji[St. Rudolph] **

**3. Amane[Rokkaku]-Wakato[N/A] **

**4. Kabaji[Hyoutei]-Aoi[Rokkaku] **

Everyone found this one amusing.

**5. Echizen[Seigaku]-Ichiuma[Yamabuki] **

**6. Katsuo[Seigaku]-Uchimura[Fudomine] **

**7. Touji[Yamabuki]-Ichirou[St. Rudolph] **

**8. Hiyoshi[Hyoutei]-Horio[Seigaku] **

In the back of their minds, Kachiro and Katsuo knew they should feel deeply sorry for Hiyoshi, but they just couldn't bring themselves to. Hiyoshi deserved it and everybody knew it.

**9. Choutarou[Hyoutei]-Momoshiro[Seigaku]**

…_**And that's all we care about, folks! **_

"What the hell?" Said Sakurai of Fudomine blankly, scanning the list for his name. "I'm not even on it!"

"You may be seeing more than one reference to the last comment on this paper," said the principal, tapping the roommate-listing sheet and ignoring Sakurai completely, "so make sure to read it. If your name isn't on the list, just pick whatever rooms you want, because it has already been decided that you are a relatively unimportant supporting character and therefore will not be receiving much screen, or in this case, page time."

A few of the boys gaped disbelievingly at the principal, but he seemed not to notice and got heavily to his feet.

"Other than that, I think you will find your stay here both enriching and lively. Welcome to Suzuki Daiichi Junior High."

* * *

**oOoOo**

* * *


	4. Bad Impressions

Not So Good First Impressions: Class #1

* * *

**~oOoOo~**

* * *

Life at Suzuki, it turned out, really wasn't so bad after all. The principal had scared the hell out of the boys the first day, giving them nightmares, but with the principal safely located in his office, life at Suzuki was quite comfortable. The dorms were modern as promised— rooms well equipped and reasonably spacious. Bluish carpets hugged wooden floors of long, narrow, but well lighted hallways. At either end of the hallway were enormous windows, allowing sunshine to seep in. The boys spent the weekend getting settled into their rooms and trying to break the ice with their new roommates, except for Shinji and Kamio who got to skip the latter step.

Classes started the following Monday.

Kamio's first class of the day was Physics. To his disappointment, there was only one other person from Fudomine in that class. The only other people he knew were a few random guys from Hyoutei and Kirihara. That didn't stop him from determinedly ignoring the latter, however. It was with a considerable level of trepidation that Kamio entered the classroom at the beginning of the week, genuinely not knowing what to expect.

The physics teacher was one of the shortest women Kamio had ever seen in his life, a little squat, with square glasses and long hair. On the board behind her, she had written the words, "Welcome to Physics with Mrs. Shiosake", and under that, "Don't Screw Around".

When everyone was seated, she cleared her throat and spoke to the class in a sharp, irritated voice.

"This is physics, the study of matter, energy, motion, and force. Some consider it to be the most difficult of all sciences. In this class, you will find that there is only one rule." She pointed to the words written on the board behind her.

No one said anything, which seemed to please her marginally.

"You might think that it makes sense for me to take roll and then start with an introduction to physics. I myself did. But that was before I came into this class this morning and found that the photocopier was broken, so I couldn't give you any notes."

At least that seemed to explain why she looked like she wanted to kill someone.

"This means that we cannot start out the conventional way. Instead, you will begin by doing a little lab to get into the feel of physics. I originally created this lab for my own enjoyment, but then I realized it could also be used to occupy a class where no one understands anything about physics. Directions are at each lab table. Just read and follow them and when we are finished gathering data, I will explain what the point of the lab was. Pick a lab partner at your free will. Maximum of three people per group. If you have four people wanting to work together, split up into two groups of two, geniuses. The procedure is also on the lab table. Any questions?"

Kamio snapped back from his zoning-out spell at these words.

He had loads of questions, but he couldn't reasonably ask any of them without getting called an idiot. It was one of the hypocrisies of school.

"Right then, everybody split up." she said. "Just get the lab done and don't screw around!"

Kamio groaned. Was "don't screw around" going to be her new catchphrase? He hoped not. Though it _was_ marginally better than "don't let your guard down".

Kamio automatically turned around in his seat, expecting Sakurai to catch his eye and affirm that they would be working together. However, it seemed that someone had beat him to it, for Kirihara had already claimed the seat next to Kamio, smiling in his usual predator-before-prey manner.

"Want to be my lab partner, Kamio kun?"

"I'm partnering with…"

Kamio scanned the room. Sakurai had paired up with Touji.

"Bastard!"

"It seems you don't have a partner either; we'll have to work together. Don't worry, we'll accomplish great things." Somehow, with that leer, Kirihara seemed like he was asking Kamio to join the Dark Side.

Kamio ground his teeth. He wondered vacantly how much Kirihara had paid Sakurai to desert him, so that he could swoop in. Clearly, however, Kamio did not really have much of a choice. Everyone else had partnered up, so he swallowed his anger, damn near choking on it, and followed Kirihara to the same lab table as Touji and Sakurai.

Shoot the Bullet into the Can lab. How very appropriate.

Kirihara immediately picked up the gun when they arrived at the lab table. Kamio snatched it back.

"No playing around!"

"I'm being careful."

"How the hell do you do this lab?" Kamio squinted at the directions, trying to understand the procedure.

Kirihara fooled around with the gun.

"Could you at least _pretend_ to be working?" Kamio snapped.

"I'm just making sure it's safe for you." Kirihara said, tossing the gun into the air before pulling a James Bond pose.

"Don't screw around!" called the teacher from the front of the room.

"She's talking to you, screw off." Kamio informed Kirihara.

"Does Kamio seem a little tense today?" Touji asked.

"Maybe he's upset that he has to work with Kirihara." Said Sakurai.

"Maybe he's upset that this lab focuses on momentum and not torque." Suggested Touji.

"_Maybe_ he's upset because people talk about him like he's not there!" Kamio shouted.

"Yeah, he's definitely tense." Said Kirihara happily.

"I'm not tense! I'm very happy! Can't you see that I'm happy?" Kamio ground his teeth. "Give me the gun now. We need to shoot the can."

"Wait, I'm not done." Kirihara whined.

"Goddam it, Kirihara, hand it over!"

"In a minute!"

"No, _now!_"

"In a _minute_!"

Kamio made a lunge for the gun and Kirihara stepped back and tripped over a cord on the floor and then Touji grabbed Kirihara to keep him from falling and this freaked Kirihara out so he jumped and pulled the trigger of the gun in self-defense.

The rubber bullet whizzed out and nailed Hiyoshi, who was working nearby, directly in the crotch.

Hiyoshi gasped in pain and collapsed into a heap on the floor, curling into a fetal position. Everyone stared at the palpitating boy, unsure of whether to freak out on Hiyoshi's behalf or laugh.

Sakurai convulsively locked his own knees together in self-defense, gazing on in horror.

Unfortunately, at the noise of contact, the teacher had come running over to see what had gone down.

"What happened?!" she shouted, although it was pretty obvious, with Hiyoshi lying in a heap on the floor, whimpering softly. The rest of the class was beside itself with laughter.

"_He_—" Kamio and Kirihara pointed at eachother at the same time, causing the class to erupt into laughter once more.

"Silence!" shouted the teacher.

Everyone stopped mid-laugh.

"I'm serious! Who did this?" she pointed somewhat gingerly at Hiyoshi, but made no move to help him.

"It was _Kirihara_, Mrs. Shiosake," a greasy haired boy from across the room assured in a snooty voice. "And he did it because Kamio attacked him. I'm sure I saw—

"You stay out of this!" Kirihara snarled.

The teacher glared at the pair of them and then sighed angrily.

"I gave one rule." She said. "'Don't screw around'. Was it too much for you two to follow? Are you and your peers so pathetically immature that you thought something like this would be funny? "

"It was an accident!" exclaimed Kamio. "And we're _not_ immature."

On the other side of the room, Uchimura picked up a cylindrical test tube that was on the lab table and started to laugh.

"What's so funny?" asked the teacher.

"It looks like a glass condom!" he sniggered.

Kamio slapped his forehead.

"I rest my case." The teacher said coldly. "You students are rude and immature and hardly worthy of the privileges of labs. Especially _you two_." She said to Kamio and Kirihara.

"Didn't you consider that maybe this was also sort of Touji and Sakurai's fault?" Kamio cried, pointing at the other two boys who had been curiously silent up until now, free of any kind of blame. They wore matching smirks.

"It couldn't have had anything to do with them because they aren't important enough characters in the plot to cause any turn of events." The teacher said.

The smirks dropped from their faces.

Nevertheless," the teacher continued, "I don't know what was acceptable at your old school, but it won't be tolerated here. Both of you will stay after class."

More laughter followed.

"How cute..."

"They're going down…"

"Those two _lovebirds_…."

"Okay, who said that!?" Kamio shouted, blushing furiously and scanning the classroom. But no one owned up.

The teacher moved to return to the front of the room.

"Mrs. Shiosake…?"

"What now?"

Kamio pointed at Hiyoshi, who had fainted. "What should we do with him?"

**XxXxX**

The class worked in silence for the rest of the period, and when the bell rang, and the rest of the students filed out of the classroom as quickly as they politely could. Kirihara, too, got up to leave, but was stopped by a forceful "SIT" from the teacher.

After the last student left, she looked at the two of them.

"I am not particularly interested in hearing about the intricacies of your stupidity. All I know is that I gave one rule for this class and you two were unable to obey it. This is not something that I am willing to accept." She stared at both of them severely for a moment, as if considering something. "Both of you will be coming to after school detention for a week."

"But I have tennis practice!" both boys practically screamed at the same time.

"The tennis team hasn't even been formed yet." She said.

"Well, it _will_ be and we _will_ be chosen and then we _will_ miss practice if we're on detention!" Kirihara shouted.

"Well, then you really should have thought about that before you started screwing around in my class, shouldn't you have?" she started getting mad. "You all screw around too much! That's the problem with your generation! You think that you can do whatever you want and everyone will just clean up the mess and other people getting hurt doesn't matter at all!"

"But sensei," a pleading note had entered Kamio's voice, "we'll _really_ have to be at practice. The finals will be coming up!"

Eight months was coming up.

"I don't need any of your nonsense!" She snapped. "Do you know what you could have done? Hiyoshi Wakashi could have lost his family jewels!"

Both boys started to answer, then stopped, confused. They looked at each other, clearly sharing a thought.

"The sentence remains at one week." She said finally, slightly thrown by the fact that neither boy was talking.

"Mrs. Shiosake…." Kamio began carefully, wondering how to best appeal to the severe looking teacher. "We understand the errors that we made. But we won't ever do it again, honest! We don't need to miss—"

"Two weeks."

"What?" gasped Kamio, unused to his tactics being shot down so easily. "But we didn't even—"

"Three weeks."

"What are you—"

"Four weeks. Had enough?"

"I'm trying to make a point here!" Kamio screamed. "Our punishment is totally disproportionate to the cr—"

"How about another week? Had enough now?"

"I can't _believe_ this!!" Kamioi looked to Kirihara for support, but the latter seemed to be rather enjoying watching them fight. Kamio turned back to the short woman.

"You're abusing your position as a teacher." He informed her.

"I take what I can."

"Even if—"

"Six weeks."

"_THIS MAKES NO SENSE!_"

**XxXxX**

Kamio and Kirihara exited the classroom ten minutes later, after Kamio had successfully earned them three months of detention.

* * *

**oOoOo**

* * *

**A/N** ah, had to get some breakfast club into the mix there...

By the way, if there's anyone reading, you would boost my spirits by reviewing!


	5. Touché, My Friend

The Health Class: A Companion to "Bad Impressions"

* * *

**~oOoOo~**

* * *

Shinji's morning went somewhat better than Kamio's.

His first class of the day was health. Entering the classroom, Shinji found Choutarou and Yuuta already seated with several Seigaku boys. Even Echizen had arrived; he had eventually found his way back to the dorms from the bathrooms, though it had taken him a day and a half.

The teacher sat at the front of the room with his back to the boys, working on his computer. Everyone was pretty rowdy, chattering more and more loudly as more students entered the room until the bell sounded for class to begin at eight o'clock. The noise died down as everyone focused on the teacher at the front of the class.

He got up from his computer and turned around.

"Coach Sakaki?!" chorused all of the tennis boys who had been awesome enough to attend the Senbatsu camp.

"The one and only." He said, but in a much more depressed voice than people usually use when announcing something like that.

There were a few moments of silence.

Choutarou raised his hand cautiously.

"Um, sir, I don't mean to be rude but….what the bloody hell are you doing here?"

The others nodded fervently.

Sakaki sighed exaggeratedly and pretended to become very interested in a clicky black ballpoint pen on his desk. Actually, it _was_ pretty cool. It had a snowman on top.

"The Senbatsu camp was a great time for all of us," he began. "Not only for the lucky students who got to spend every waking minute of every day competing with one another for the chance to play a team that turned out to be surprisingly lame, but also for us teachers who got to spend time with those students and one another."

He paused again, sighing heavily and looking up at the class. No one was getting it.

"They lied to me!" he shouted, suddenly, dropping his formal pretenses. "Hanamura and Ryuuzaki and all of them…they said that we did so well at that camp, it would be awesome to work together again and all join the staff of this new school! They said we would have fun doing whatever we wanted with you students!"

"So you only applied to work here because you thought that the others would follow and you wanted to psych us out by suddenly showing up?" Choutarou questioned carefully.

"I somehow thought it would be funny." Sakaki admitted.

"Then you deserved what you got." Hissed Kaidoh bluntly. "No one messes with us."

"Well, doesn't that sound awkward, especially from _you_." Sakaki said.

"He got carried away, sir." volunteered David. "Doesn't know how to act in class with _respect_ to the teacher."

Everyone stared at him.

"I thought you were off puns." Said Shinji.

"Oh darn, you're right." David snapped his fingers and dropped his head to his desk.

"_Alright_, let's all settle down." Said Sakaki in a bored voice. "I'm depressed enough as it is without having to listen to the ZAP conversations of a bunch of fourteen year olds, or however old you are."

At this, a few boys shoved their hands under their desks, so as not to be exposed by the writing on their palms, but Sakaki, who was rummaging through his desk for the roll sheet, did not appear to have noticed. Having finally fou nd the right paper, he straightened up.

"Amane Hikaru."

"Present!" The gangly redhead called, voice slightly muffled by his desk.

"Why does he always get called 'David'?" Shinji mused aloud. "That's not even a Japanese name."

"I'm not sure," Momoshiro replied thoughtfully. "I think there was been some kind of explanation at the beginning of the Rokkaku arc, but I forgot it."

"Who _cares?_" Yuuta asked irately.

"For once, I would have to say 'well put'," Echizen agreed.

"Will you all shut up so I can get this over with?" Sakaki snapped, glaring at the four of them. "I haven't lost _all_ my self respect."

Choutarou raised his hand again.

"With all due respect sir, you quit a job at Hyoutei where you were a manager of a national level tennis team to work as a health teacher _here_."

There was silence for about ten seconds as Sakaki regarded Choutarou impassively.

"Touché." he said finally.

XxX

Sakaki got all the way to the k's before he called a name that got no reply.

"Kajimoto." Silence. "Kajimoto Takahisa." More silence.

Sakaki said the name approximately four more times before determining that said boy was indeed not present. "Who misses the first day of school?" he wondered aloud, making a check on his list.

"Anyway," Sakaki looked up, dumping the roll sheet on his desk, "that's all for today because I don't feel like finishing roll and I can see the important faces anyway. Since it's the first day of classes, why don't you all split up and _get to know eachother." _

He said the last part putting quote marks on his fingers. "Go."

"So why 'David?'" Shinji asked the redheaded boy. "I mean, is it supposed to have some sort of literary significance or something? Is it a joke? An allusion? Why don't you want to be called Hikaru? Personally, I think the writers should stay in their league."

"Does it _matter_ why that name got chosen?" drawled Echizen in a would-be bored voice, though he secretly had been hanging onto every word of the conversation. "'Hikaru' is a dumb name anyway."

"Hey!" A boy one row over and three seats up with faded orange hair who was wearing a pale blue jacket and black slacks turned around. "Hikaru is an awesome name!"

"What the hell is _Ouran High School Host Club_ doing here?" A bewildered Shinji asked no one in particular.

David looked rather affronted.

"I've spent the majority of my life working towards making a unique name for myself in all respects," he sniffed, "and now I find…it has been taken!"

Hikaru shrugged. "You think sharing a name is bad? I have to share a face, too." At these words, as if on cue, an identical boy in an identical outfit turned around.

Kaidoh comforted a rather depressed David. "Hey, come on…" he hissed awkwardly, patting the other boy on the shoulder. Sharing a name isn't so bad."

"Hi, I'm Hikaru's brother, Kaoru!" The second twin announced, extending his hand. "What's your name?"

Kaidoh went rigid.

Fortunately, at that moment, before a serious cat-snake fight could break out, three students entered the classroom, whose door had been left in a propped open position.

Kaidoh's eyes widened. They were three boys from Josei Shounan: Kajimoto, followed by Wakato and one of the twins that no one cared about enough to learn the name of.

"Sorry we're late, sir." Said Kajimoto importantly, striding to the front of the room and extending his hand to Sakaki. "There is no excuse for such impudence on our part, but we got lost in the new school."

"Has everyone finished their greetings?" Sakaki called to the rest of the class. "I was actually joking when I said that you should get to know each other, you know, _to be ironic_, but you all actually did it. I want to start the lesson now."

"…Sir?" said Kajimoto. "I'm sorry we're late. May we sign in?"

"Everyone take your seats and get out your notebooks!" Sakaki commanded, looking through the three boys from Josei Shounan as if he couldn't see them. "I want to get through an introduction to the three basic types of health today."

Most of the class groaned, but dug around through their bags for their notebooks. All except Echizen, Momoshiro, and Kaidoh who were observing, half-surprised, half-amused, the three ignored boys at the front of the room.

"Excuse me? Sir?" Kajimoto decided to give it one more try.

Sakaki stood up and promptly turned his back on the three boys. He began drawing a triangle of perfect health on the white board.

The three from Josei Shounan looked nonplussed and turned to see the rest of the class. Everyone except for Momo, Echizen, and Kaidoh looked right through them, at the board on which Sakaki was writing. The three from Seigaku exchanged confused looks, wondering why Sakaki, despite all his shortcomings, was doing something as stupid as ignoring three students.

Though Kaidoh noted, with some satisfaction that Wakato seemed much less cool and composed without instant attention and fan girls.

"Um, guys?" Kajimoto ventured uncertainly, looking around the class and trying to make eye contact with some of the students. "What's going on?"

No one replied.

Wakato uneasily fingered the bill of his baseball hat, wondering if doing one of his "transformations" would help the situation.

The twin, who incidentally we don't care about, cast about for some identifying move to do, but then realized that without his brother he had nothing.

"Seriously, what's going on?" Kajimoto's voice started to rise with worry. He anxiously scanned the class again. When Momoshiro finally caught his eye, Kajimoto almost sagged with relief.

"Thank God…look, he sees us, Wakato." Kajimoto emphatically pointed this obvious fact out to his dim friend.

"What a relief." Wakato sneered, though he still looked nervous, so it did not have quite the same effect.

"Momoshiro, what's going on?" Kajimoto asked urgently.

Momoshiro, unsure of whether or not to answer, shot a glance at Kaisoh, who shrugged. As far as Kaidoh was concerned, if the rest of the class did not need to acknowledge the new students, then there was no reason for him to.

"We need to know! Is something wrong? Have we offended the class?" Kajimoto's voice was urgent.

"What, are you like your group's spokesperson or something?" Echizen finally snapped, unable to pretend to take notes anymore.

The class stared at Echizen.

Sakaki turned around from the board, annoyed.

"Echizen, Prince of Tennis or not, if you act like an idiot in my class, I _will _put you in the corner." He said coldly.

Before Echizen could reply, the insignificant twin cracked and screamed, "IS THIS A JOKE? WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH YOU PEOPLE?"

"Shhh, there must be a logical explanation," soothed his captain.

"Echizen, are you willing to act normal for the rest of the period or would this be a preferable option?" Sakaki asked, holding up a large, coned shaped paper hat and pointing to a corner of the room where a three-legged stool was already set up.

"Okay, what _IS_ going on?" Kajimoto snapped too. He whipped around to face the teacher, tears in his eyes. "I'm sorry we were late sir, but this is just cruel!"

Echizen sighed. "I can behave normally." He told Sakaki.

Kajimoto let out a howl. "I don't know what you all are playing at!" He wailed tearfully. "And I also don't know why I just used a British expression that I had no way of knowing about! And I also don't know why I'm the only one from my school talking! But this isn't funny, and you all need to think about how you treat people! Wakato, Insignificant Twin, come on! We're _going_." And with that, Kajimoto grabbed the elbows of his two friends and dragged them all out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

"No tax breaks _and_ the facilities suck." Sakaki griped, angrily staring at the door that had just shut of its own accord. "Why the _hell_ did I decide to work here?"

* * *

**oOoOo**

* * *

**A/N: **

1. To 'Moi'---Interesting point you bring up about the parallelism between Tezuka and Mrs. Shiosake; I actually didn't intend that nor did I notice it until you pointed it out. Very perceptive of you.  
2. I somehow ended up putting in several random Ouran High School Host Club references; hope you've seen or read some of it.  
3. Weird situation(s) in this chapter will make sense later. Probably.

Please Review~say what you liked or disliked! :)


	6. Ennui For Two

* * *

**~oOoOo~**

* * *

**9:15am**

The following Saturday morning was intensely hot. A drowsy silence fell over the Suzuki campus, but a pleasant sort of warm silence that one could fall into.

Kirihara sat wistfully staring out the window of the physics classroom at the sunshine, for today was his and Kamio's first week of detention, starting at nine o'clock in the morning and lasting for twelve whole hours. How that was even legal was anyone's guess. But boarding schools can do whatever they want. Kamio didn't spare the beautiful day a glance; perhaps not because he didn't care that he was missing out, but because looking wistful would only remind them both whose fault it really was that they were here.

Both boys were currently dying of boredom. Kirihara especially was having a difficult time sitting still. Neither had been allowed any form of entertainment, including conversation with one another, the teacher, or even school work. The day was to be spent in meditative contemplation of the wrong nature of their ways.

The only positive thing seemed to be that the teacher looked nearly as bored as the two of them were. She sat with one cheek resting on her palm, staring blankly at her computer screen, but not really doing anything. If watched closely, she could be seen shooting longing glances at the teacher's lounge which was just across the hall. Finally she clicked her tongue and stood up.

"I'm going to get coffee. I'll be back in five minutes. You don't move. You don't speak. You don't do anything other than think about why you are here. It's important for you to understand exactly why you are in detention for you to obtain the full benefits from it. When I come back if you've _moved_…." She trailed off, daring them to ask what would happen if they moved. When they didn't, she seemed slightly disappointed. "Everything understood? Any questions?"

"Yeah, quick question." Kamio asked.

"What?"

"Why are you speaking to us in English?"

"I'm speaking to both of you in English because it's _his _worst subject." She jerked her head toward Kirihara.

Kirihara frowned. "How did you know that?"

"You all took surveys at the beginning of the year, remember?"

"Those were supposed to be anonymous!"

"Didn't you notice that the first question was 'name'?"

They both pondered for a minute.

"…how did I _not_ catch that?"*

"Doesn't surplise me." She said nastily. "Anything else you'd rike to know?"

Kirihara snickered at her Asian inversion of the "r" and "l" sound.

"Just because of that, I'm adding one detention to the ones you have! Kamio, too!" She shouted, careful not to use any "r's" or "l's" this time.

But I didn't _do_ anything!" Kamio tried tiredly.

"Since when has _that_ ever mattered?" Kirihara pointed out.

Kamio let his head drop onto the desk with a solid thud.

"One detention in addition now." She said.

Kamio didn't even look up.

The teacher finally shot one last warning look at Kirihara and left the room, after carefully propping the door into a wide-open position, so that she would be able to see if they left the classroom.

"Oh come on Kamio, it's just extra time to hang with me, how bad could it be?"

Kamio's body slumped out of its seat and landed heavily on the floor.

XxX

Kamio revived about half an hour later when the teacher had still not returned from her coffee break.

"Alright?" Kirihara asked.

Kamio said nothing but withdrew a sheet of notebook paper and a pen from his backpack.

"What are you doing?"

"By the looks of it, every one of our Saturdays for the rest of the year is going to be spent in here. I'm going to write a letter to the tennis coach. Even if I'm stuck here with _you_, I shouldn't have to miss out on the entire season."

"You think he'll accept your one-day-a-week absence?"

"I hope."

"That's never going to work. You have a bad reputation now. Who gets detention on the first day of school?"

The tip of Kamio's pencil snapped off from a pressure overload.

"It's a good thing." Kirihara assured him. "Ever since I first met you, I've seen your potential to become a master of the badass arts. This is just the beginning."

"Do you go around scoping peoples' abilities and determining how good they would be at any given situation?"

"Don't you?"

Kamio rolled his eyes and repositioned his pencil on the first line of his paper. He wrote:

_Dear Mr._

Then stopped.

"Dude, what's the tennis coach's name?" Kamio asked, realizing for the first time that he had no clue.

"How the hell would I know? I didn't even know who Yukimura was until after my first six months at Rikkaidai."

"Then who do I address it to?!" Kamio snapped.

"Who cares? Your excuse won't be accepted anyway." Kirihara's voice took on a depressed quality. "God, how long have we been in here? Must have been at least......" He checked his watch. "....twenty-three minutes...."

"Dear Mr. Blank," Kamio dictated softly, writing on his paper, "tennis is very....."

"What a great beginning. He'll be hooked in no time."

Kamio furrowed his brow and erased this line. "Tennis is something that...."

"What a great beginning. You're good as hell at this."

Kamio erased it. "For me, tennis is rather...."

"Now _that's_ a good one! Hook him by giving a heartwrenching account!"

"Want to shut the hell up?" Kamio shouted.

Unfortunately, Mrs. Shiosake heard his scream and came running back into the room.

"Way to go, Akira." Kirihara said.

Kamio was too preoccupied by Mrs. Shiosake's wrath to notice the use of the first name. "I told you _not to say a word_." She spat, literally quivering. "I don't even know why I'm surprised that you couldn't follow the rule! Am I going to have to separate the two of you into different rooms for this detention?"

"No, ma'am!" Kirihara said immediately.

"What's that!?" she added, noticing the paper in front of Kamio. He made a move to hide it away, but she snatched it from his hand and held it up to read.

"For me, tennis is rather." She read. "What a compelling beginning."

Kamio blushed deeply and Kirihara felt a stab of pity though he had been making fun of it thirty seconds ago.

"Well, this does it." she said triumphantly, folding up the letter. "I told you not to do anything but consider why you are being punished, and this is proof that you were working on other things. It's off to the principal's office with you."

"Sweet." Kamio was personally quite glad to put distance between himself and Kirihara.

"You, Kirihara," barked the teacher, "you stay here. When I come back, if you've moved, it will only be more trouble for you. You stay still and do nothing, is that absolutely clear? Any questions?"

"Yeah." said Kirihara. "Did you have to ask Tezuka Kunimitsu for permission before you stole his personality or did he give it away for free?"**

XxXxX

And so Kamio did end up having to spend the whole day with Kirihara, but in the principal's office instead of the physics classroom.**  
**

**XxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXXxXxX**

**8:30pm  
**

Silence fell in the Naruto dorm. Saturday night and everyone was studying.

"Is it just me or is there something lame about the fact that you and I are the most social people in our dorm?" Kachiro asked Katsuo.

"You know, I was just thinking that as well."

The two of them were lying on their beds, staring at the ceiling.

"…maybe we should go find some of the other guys."

"Are they really going to want to hang out with us?"

"Probably not. But we'll die of boredom if we stay here all night."

"We should play a game or something together."

"No, no games. We should avoid action. Let's go find friends and have some sort of conversation or something."

"That doesn't sound like fun at all. Why would we do that?"

"Because the only way to avoid abuse through flashbacks is by avoiding action altogether."

"What do you mean?"

"We won't be exploited if we don't _do_ anything."

"Ah. I see your point."

There was a pause.

"Ever wonder what the world would be like without flashbacks?"

They looked at eachother and burst out laughing.

XxX

Finally, ten minutes later, Katsuo was the first to peel his body off his bed and force himself to leave the room. He went from door to door in the Naruto dorm, knocking softly and slipping invitations under each person's doorway, imploring them to come to the communal gameroom of the dorm.

Fifteen minutes later, all the boys except Kirihara and Kamio were in the gameroom, staring around at one another and not really knowing why they had been called. Everyone was sitting with his group of friends from his old school.

"Well!" Kachiro broke the silence. "Since it seems that we are going to be living in the same dorm for a while and most of us only know the people who we went to school with last year, wouldn't it be a good, no, _fantastic_ idea for us to all get to know each other?" he asked.

No one spoke.

"I think that's a fantastic idea, Kachiro." Said Katsuo finally.

Still no one spoke.

Echizen got up to leave.

"No—come on! Don't go!" cried Kachiro. "Okay, we don't really know how to put it without sounding really awkward, but we just think that it would be a good idea for us all to hang out tonight and try to get to know eachother instead of cooping ourselves up in our separate rooms. We've been at this school together for almost two weeks! We need to warm up to one another."

Yuuta and Shinji exchanged skeptical looks.

"…do you have anything in mind?" Ichirou finally asked.

"Well, sure!" exclaimed Katuso, intensely relieved that someone had responded. "We could all sort of…hang out…"

"Or watch television, or talk, or play some kind of game." Added Kachiro.

"What sort of game?" Yuuta frowned.

"Well, it doesn't have to be a game as such, but just some sort of way for us all to hang out and enjoy one another's company. Any ideas?" Kachiro and Katsuo gazed around at the group of silent, glazed eyed boys.

"…Anyone?" asked Katsuo again, with a hint of desperation. "Anyone have any ideas on how we could have a fun night?

To everyone's intense surprise, Katsuo's question got an answer.

"Usu." said Kabaji, sitting up straight in his armchair.

* * *

**oOoOo**

**

* * *

**

**A/N**

* I don't know if anyone noticed, but in the first chapter, the principal says that the survey is anonymous and then the first survey question is "name". Yeah, I have no clue how I didn't catch that...

** Merci à Moi

* * *


	7. Rainbow Sunshine Valley

**Getting to Know Eachother: Part 1**  
_Kaidoh's Pathetic Tale_

* * *

**~oOoOo~**

* * *

**9:30pm**

Kamio stormed up the stairs, wanting to get to his room and take and shower and then maybe listen to some music.

Kirihara had been tailing him since they had been released from detention half an hour ago, chattering about nothing in particular. He followed Kamio all the way up the staircase and along the twist in the corridor that led to Kamio's room. Seeing that Kirihara did not seem to be leaving, however, Kamio strode straight past his room, not eager for Kirihara to find out where he lived. Instead, Kamio headed to the game room, thinking he would find someway to lose the other boy in there.

Noticing where he was headed, Kirihara raised an eyebrow. "Games at this time, Kamio-kun? I would have thought that you would be into something more serious."

"I have…something to do." Kamio invented randomly.

"Don't be stupid, no one _has_ to do anything in the game room."

"Hey!" Kamio spun around. "It just so happens that I have a _very_, um, important match of…." His mind suddenly went blank.

"Foosball?" Kirihara supplied helpfully.

"AIR HOCKEY!" he screamed "to…finish."

"With yourself. I see. I think I'll tag along in that case. I'm rather curious as to who's going to win."

"Listen you—"

Kamio shoved open the door of the game room at that moment and was greeted by a chorus of "GAN BAI!" so loud that he almost jumped backwards into Kirihara's arms. Almost.

"What the…" for once, both Kamio and Kirihara were speechless. At the same time.

The room was a flurry of action.

Though Yuuta was sprawled over the red sofa in the corner with Kaidoh curled up at his feet, most everyone else was moving, integrating. Everyone was hanging out, chatting with people that they had previously never spoken to, playing games together. Everyone was being friendly and social and everything! What the _hell_ was going on?

Then Kamio saw it. Kirhara followed his line of gaze and it all made sense.

In the center of the gameroom, there was a coffee table. And on the coffee table was beer. Not spilled there, of course. Just cans of it. Many, many cans of beer.

And now the boys saw the room in a new light.

Momoshiro was toasting to Christianity with some St. Rudolph guys while Kabaji sat like a boulder in a corner of the room, eyes unfocused and drooping.

David seemed to be playing poker with a group of Fudomine boys, who kept getting distracted by Ichiuma and Ichirou, who were by the pool table examining a line of pool balls. Ichirou and Ichiuma were acting most strange. Every once in a while, one of them would frown, pick up a pool ball, and move it to another place in the line. Then they would both stand back and appraise.

On the other side of the room, Echizen played a vicious match of ping-pong against Touji. One might think that he seemed to be the only sober one in the room, but in fact, if examined carefully, his eyes were quite obviously glazed with alcohol.

"There it is! Twist-o Serve!" The freshmen trio, who were standing nearby cried out as Echizen decided to make a decisive move. However, their cry was far less synchronized than usual. Their voices sounded dull and sluggish. They all finished speaking at different times and Horio completely slumped forward afterward.

The party had begun.

"Oiiiiii………Kamio and Kirihara are finally here!" Slurred a very pleased-looking Aoi, whose volume of voice seemed to be the only thing unaffected by the alcohol. "Have something to drink, there's plenty…"

"How the _hell_ did you guys get ahold of this?" Kirihara asked incredulously, striding towards the drink table without hesitation. "Even Yukimura-sempai was never smooth to pull something like this!"

"Actually, it was Kabaji's idea." Said Yuuta from the sofa. His eyes were somewhat bloodshot, but overall he seemed the most sober of them all. "We were bored and trying to figure out some way to have fun. So on Kabaji's suggestion, we sneaked off the campus and kidnapped the first adult we saw. Then we told him to buy us alcohol."

"And he just agreed?"

"Well, we threatened to read him a passage from _Twilight_ if he didn't." Yuuta explained. "Got him moving right away."

"Yeah." David interrupted. "When we mentioned _Twilight_, it was like he suddenly saw the situation in a _new light_!"

"David, shut up." said Yuuta without even looking at him. "Anyway, that was pretty much our plan."

"Ah. That was clever. But I'm surprised that you, Yuuta, were okay with kidnapping some random person."

"Well, at first I thought it would be kind of weird." admitted Yuuta. "But Kabaji convinced us. He gave a really inspiring speech."

"Is there any point asking how he gave a speech using only the word, 'usu'?"

"No." Shinji said flatly.

"Us—_hic_" Kabaji said.

There was a crash on the other side of the room.

Everyone looked over in shock to where Touji and Echizen had been playing ping-pong. It seemed that Echizen had attempted to do a Drive B, complete with scraping his fiery heels against his side of the court, and to make a long story short, had failed. He now had Touji in a rather compromising position.

Ichiuma and Ichirou were still gazing perplexedly at their line-up of pool balls. Finally, Sakurai snapped and stalked over and asked them what the hell they were doing.

"Well, first we lined them up by color…" Ichirou began.

"And then we lined them up.....by….number." Ichiuma mumbled.

"So what are you guys doing now?" asked Sakurai, completely nonplussed.

"Well, now we're _trying_ to line them up by size…but it's somehow……not….. working……" Ichirou complained. He lifted up the eight ball from where it was fourth in line, examined it closely and then plonked it back down in seventh place instead.

The evening more or less progressed in that fashion.

XxX

**11:00pm**

"Kira-chaaaan," Kirihara drawled, approaching the sofa and collapsing next to the redhead, "I like you, ya know that? You're my friend. My best friend!" He threw his hands into the air for emphasis. Drunk Kirihara was more or less the same as sober Kirihara except that he was 100% fearless instead of 99%. As in, he didn't worry about the effects of calling Kamio such a _cute_ name.

Fortunately, Kamio did not appear to have noticed. He had only registered the first word that Kirihara had said.

"Didja call me_ Kira_? Like _Killer_ Kira on _Death Note_? That's awesome. Now all we need is that girl with braids from Seigaku...."

"The head coach's granddaughter?" Momo asked confusedly. "Why?"

"Because then we would have Kira AND Ryuzaki!!" Kamio and Kirihara dissolved into laughter.*

David looked faintly disgruntled that someone had successfully made a joke more stupid than his.

"God, I'm so _funny_." Kamio exclaimed, wiping a tear from his eye. "I don't know why I never noticed. I'm a goddam riot!"

"HEY! Everyone…!" Everyone turned their heads. Uchimura had somehow got on top of the television and was addressing everyone in the room. "You, like, knew this had to happen. Otherwise all of us getting drunk would be completely, like, pointless! It's speech time!"

His next words were drowned out by everyone falling to their knees and screaming, "Nooooooooooooooooooooooo!"

"No, guys I seriously just want you to know," Uchimura cleared his throat and waited for the noise to die down. "It, like, might seem weird for me to say, but it's true: you're all Super Special to me." He paused. "I love you guys." Another pause.

Someone cleared his throat.

"So like, I think we should all thank Kachiro and Katsuo for suggesting this little session."

A few people clapped weakly and Uchimura turned solemnly to the freshmen. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but you guys actually did something useful for once. As in something that actually affected the plot."

The freshmen in question weren't sure whether to look pissed off or pleased.

"I feel like you guys are basically my best friends." He continued. "You've turned my life from like, a vortex of meaningless existence into like, a rainbow sunshine valley."

"Whoa. That's deep." Said Ichirou.

Everyone agreed.

"Yeah, and we're all like….great…and everything. We're awesome. We're like a dream team or something."

"Only not as gay." Said Kamio.

"Yeah. And I have a question for you guys." They listened carefully. He took his time, fondling his hair, as he searched for potent words with which to to articulate himself. "What would you say.....is like, the most awesome thing that's ever happened to you? Like, ever?"

Huh. Everyone had to stop and think about that seriously. There was silence in the room for a few minutes as everyone just considered.

"_Ever_? Hm, there's so much to pick from." Momoshiro muttered vaguely, leafing through his memories of beating Echizen in eating contests and............well, actually that was pretty much it.

"Hey, I know the best thing that ever happened to me!" said Kirhara brightly. "I can tell you all!"

"No, _I've_ got a story!" whined Choutarou.

"Quiet!" Surprisingly, the words came from Kaidoh. Said boy got to his feet and made his way to the television.

He gestured for Uchimura to get off, and then he seated himself on top. "_I_ have a story." He said. "And the best thing that ever happened to me will blow your minds. I have to tell you from the beginning."

"Who here severely doubts that this story is going to be mindblowing?" Kamio asked aloud.

Everyone but Kaidoh raised his hand.

"You just wait and see!" Kaidoh hissed angrily. He took a deep breath to calm himself. He hissed once more.

"Fifth grade." He began, wanting to open with something short and impressive, "was the year that I discovered my true calling."

He paused for effect to see if anyone seemed hooked by his intriguing statement. They all looked bored. Slightly miffed, he continued:

"I was on my way to school. I was walking along and I passed that gigantic drainage pipe thingy, or irrigation channel, or maybe it's a river. I never really figured that part out. Well anyway, I passed that channel of water with the bridge over it that I always train under. Incidentally, that water makes no sense because sometimes I'm standing in it and it comes up to my knees and then other times it's deep enough that I'm almost drowning." Kaidoh stopped here and frowned. He made a mental note to figure out what _was_ up with that, later. "Anyway, I was passing this place and something completely cliché happened, although it wasn't cliché at the time because at that point it was the first time that it had happened."

Most people in the room had to think about that sentence and say it over in their heads a few times to understand it. Kaidoh obligingly waited and then moved on.

"Well, I was strolling along, without a worry in the world when I heard a soft, weak noise coming from where the supports of the bridge enter the water. A little gray and white kitten was perched on the base, meowing for help. No clue how it got there. I guess it's possible that it could have fallen off the bridge, but even that doesn't really make sense if you think about it, since the base doesn't jut out enough to catch a falling object."

Everyone was getting annoyed with the fact that Kaidoh's sentences were so long, they took a long time to digest.

"Well, despite the strangeness of the situation, I couldn't just leave the poor kitten there to die, could I? Since apparently I'm the only person in this whole city who ever notices lost animals, I knew I had to do something or the kitten would probably starve to death. I quickly assessed the situation and saw that it was, as I had expected, very dangerous indeed. It would take all my cunning and skill to complete this mission. But with the compelling motivation to rescue a kitten that I had known for thirty seconds, how could I falter? I dropped my backpack onto the ground, whipped off my shirt and shoes and bandana and dove into the icy waters!"

Kachiro fell asleep.

"The swim was difficult," said Kaidoh, who didn't appear to have noticed anything, "but I persevered. I got to the bridge and retrieved the kitten and returned to the shore with little more trouble than the time I spilled glue on Momoshiro's snowman project in second grade."

Momoshiro made a snarling noise, but Kaidoh continued.

"I had the kitten with me. And for the first time, it occurred to me that I had no idea to whom it belonged. For the first time, it dawned on me that it might have been a good idea to find the owner first, and then have them or the police take care of the situation. So I stood there, dripping and feeling pretty stupid, when a strange man walked up to me and said, '_what are you doing here, kid?_'. I said, '_I'm trying to find the owner of this kitten._ Then he said '_Ah' _and was quiet for a moment. '_So you're not the owner? You just decided to help out the little creature in need?_' he asked. '_Yes_', I replied. He looked me over for a moment, and then turned back to me and said very mysteriously, '_you ever consider making a living out of this_'? '_Out of what?_' I asked. '_Saving animals and such_. _You start small, but you could save humans later_.', he said. '_it's a fine business to be sure and it could take you great places_.'

'_Whoa…you mean like a superhero'_? I said. The man looked like he wanted to say something else, but changed his mind and said, '_yes, just like a superhero_. _You can become one right now if you like._' I couldn't believe it. This was the most dramatic and incredible event of my young life. So I got down on my knees and asked him to show me. He obliged, placing one hand on my forehead and pulling a magical staff out of nowhere.

"'_This is the finest choice of your life_.' He said. '_But remember_,' he warned me, looking gravely serious. '_With great power comes great responsibility_'.

"Okay, seriously Kaidoh, you totally stole that from Spider Man!" Yuuta shouted.

"Yeah, we're bored of this story anyway," Shinji agreed. "Just shut up and sit down so we can listen to something that's actually interesting."

With murmurs of assent from all the other boys present, Kaidoh could see that he was outnumbered, and sighing with defeat, he headed back to his place. _Last time I share a bit of my enigmatic self with any of you fools_, he thought furiously. _I miss Inui-senpai_.

"You guys missed the best part of the story." He informed them. "I didn't get to the part where I was branded with _this_."

Kaidoh reached up with one hand and undid the first few buttons of this shirt, peeling both sides apart. All the boys leaned in to look.

Kaidoh was wearing what appeared to be a skin-tight spandex suit under his clothes. Actually, it looked more or less like the Spider Man suit, except that it was green and had a picture of a coiled serpent on it.

Still not impressed, everyone waved him off stage, and he was forced to concede defeat.

* * *

**oOoOo**

* * *

**A/N:** 1. hahaha, Kaidoh's lame.  
2. *death note reference. and I must say, it's bloody hilarious.


	8. The Pumpkin Thieves

Getting to Know Eachother: Part 2  
_What A Stingy Bastard _

* * *

**~oOoOo~  
**

* * *

"Well, _that _story sucked." Said Ichirou frankly, taking a sip of his drink. "Let's have someone go next who might have a vague chance at actually entertaining us."

Everyone looked at Kamio.

"Why always me?" he said tiredly, dragging his feet as he loped toward the T.V. set. "I don't have a special memory. If I did, I wouldn't be going to school here."

"Oh, cheer up, Kamio." Mumbled Shinji. "Tell them about that time that we did that thing."

"Oh. Huh, you're right I guess that was pretty cool."

"Wait, you're not talking about _that_, are you?" asked Sakurai and Uchimura. "It's a Fudomine legend, you've gots tell them!"

It was weird how Fudomine boys all knew exactly what eachother was talking about.

"But I don't really remember it all." Said Kamio.

Shinji waved this comment off. "I'll help."

Both thought in silence for a moment. Finally Kamio spoke:

"Tachibana-san was a great captain."

"He was a smart guy: compassionate and devoted and strong." Shinji added.

"He was a mentor and a friend to each of the team members."

A pause.

"That being said, he was completely psychotic." Shinji said.

"What?" Everyone in the room was completely nonplussed. They turned to Kamio, knowing he had been close with Tachibana.

"No, actually it's true," said Kamio. "He was a great guy and we all loved him. But he was crazy."

"He made our lives worth living." Said Sakurai. "However, he was mentally unbalanced."

"Whatcha sayin' playa?" Asked Echizen.

"Well, aside from the fact that the guy was totally obsessed with Dora the Explorer, he never explained things to us." Shinji said. "He was always having us do weird challenges that had nothing to do with tennis for no apparent reason."

"Challenges?" asked Choutarou.

"Tachibana was nuts." Said Kamio. "Since he was the only third year, he took control of the team and made us do what he wanted. He wouldn't let any of us play for the team until we each brought him a pumpkin from Atobe Keigo's backyard."

Everyone stared. Finally Yuuta voiced what they were all thinking.

"What the _hell_?"

"You've heard of hazing, right?" Kamio said. "I think it's not as common in private schools since every student is "privileged" or whatever, but public schools are famous for it. This was our team's version of it."

"But why stealing pumpkins? Doesn't hazing usually involve dancing in underwear?" Choutarou tried carefully.

"Often it does." Kamio shrugged. "We didn't get it either. To be honest, none of the things we did for Tachibana ever made sense. But he told that if we wanted to be on the team, we had to break onto Atobe's property and get the fruit."

"How would he know it was from Atobe's garden?" Kirihara garbled from the couch.

"That was the other part. You had to bring a friend with you to film the whole thing."

"Then couldn't your friend just get his pumpkin at the same time?"

"No." Kamio said simply.

"Why not?"

The boys of Fudomine exchanged looks.

"It just isn't done." Said Uchimura finally.

There was an awkward silence. Kamio cleared his throat. "Anyway, we drew numbers from a hat to determine the order we would be stealing the pumpkins. Of course, _I_ got last. The night I had to steal a pumpkin from Atobe's yard with Shinji filming was a memorable one. And bear in mind, going last is the worst. The task got harder and harder each time."

"Why?"

"Why? Because Atobe started _noticing_ that pumpkins were going missing from his yard after the first few times! Each time we went there, the security was greater and sometimes there were even people there on guard!"  
"I remember that!" Choutarou cried. "Atobe-san started getting mad! At first he though it was us stealing from him, but when he realized it wasn't, he started forcing us to stand guard over his garden in shifts at night! Remember, Kabaji?"

"Usu."

"Well, the secret comes out now." Said Shinji. "It was us all along. And it got very difficult to get those pumpkins with so much security. That's the real reason behind the hardcoreness of Fudomine—we all had to work hard and use our brains in creative ways to get the pumpkins. It isn't because of some dumb revolution."

"Seriously?" Momoshiro was interested. "I remember how much drama that created when we played you…trying to understand your past, I mean. What actually happened with that?"

"Honestly?" Shinji asked. The others nodded. Shinji and Kamio looked at each other and then Kamio replied.

"Nothing."

There was a pregnant pause.

"…Nothing?" Kaidoh asked finally.

"Nothing. Tachibana made the whole thing up. He said it would make us seem more badass. To be honest, the only true part of the story that he passes around is that he got in a fight. But it was only him and with only one third year. And they weren't fighting for tennis ideals or anything, for Godssake. What was it, Shinji?"

"Something about vending machine change, I think." Muttered Shinji.

"Anyway, Tachibana is pretty much delusional, but he was our captain so we had to go along with all his crazy schemes to get more screen time and appear badass."

Touji sniggered.

"Think it's funny, do you?" Kamio snapped, getting irrationally angry, "I'd like to see what kind of stupid hazing _your_ captain would come up with. It was no joke. I still remember the night that I had to get my pumpkin.............

**....**

**....**

**XxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXx**

_Kamio and Shinji had arrived in front of Atobe's house just after two o'clock in the morning. All was silent. Both were swaddled in long black cloaks with hoods and wore dark ski masks. _

"Ready?" Kamio asked.

"If you are." Shinji pressed the red button on his video camera to turn it on.

Before them an ostentatious gate loomed, guarding the grandest mansion in all the city.

"I can't believe we're actually doing this." Kamio murmured, approaching the charcoal gate dotted with golden spikes. "Is tennis worth this?"

"How can you say that?"

"_I'm_ not the Prince of Tennis."

The two boys removed the grappling hooks that Tachibana had told them to bring and used them to hoist themselves over the gate. They landed, soft footed, in the front lawns of the Atobe mansion.

"We are in the front lawns of the Atobe mansion." Shinji dictated softly to the video camera. "It is…" he checked his watch, "2:15am. The gate has been safely passed."

The two crept across the front lawn, silent as silhouettes.

"Does this seem strangely easy?" Kamio asked after a long pause.

"Yeah, I was just thinking that. Not even a dog barking. I thought that Atobe would have hired guards to keep watch everywhere after the first six break-ins."

"Seriously. What a stingy bastard."

The two stopped just before the mansion.

"We're just in front of Atobe's mansion." Shinji informed the camera. "Now we'll go around the side of the house and proceed for about fifty meters. The sideyard has a pond that we'll have to cross on a bridge, and then once we make it to the backyard, there's a series of gardens including a vegetable path where the prize awaits."

"That doesn't sound too bad." Kamio muttered. They crossed the pond on a quaint little arch bridge and slipped into the backyard, silent as shadows. There were several garden patches, but Shinji pointed to what appeared to be a vast field of produce on the farthest end. It was completely deserted.

"Okay, so you just go in there and get a pumpkin." He instructed Kamio. "I'll hide here behind this tree and film in case something goes wrong."

"How would that help if something went wrong?" Kamio asked.

"'Cause then I wouldn't get caught as well."

Kamio rolled his eyes and walked around the perimeter of the garden until he could see where the pumpkins were growing.

"He didn't guard it at all. What a dumbass." Kamio muttered to himself, striding forward. "I'll just have to be quick about—

The moment that Kamio's foot crossed into the flowerbeds, a shriek of an alarum bell pieced the air, causing the two boys to jump about a foot into the air.

"My God!" Kamio recoiled a few steps and Shinji came running to see if everything was alright.

"Atobe must have put motion or heat sensors into the ground around the perimeter of the garden so that he could tell if someone broke in!"

"Hiding security weapons in the ground? That tricky bastard!"

"By the way, if an alarm just went off, why are we standing around talking? Shouldn't someone be after us or something?"

"_I _don't know. You're the one that saw the new James Bond movie; you tell me!"

"Dude, it was so stupid. Casino Royale is way better."

At that point, their conversation was interrupted as guards dressed in Star Wars storm trooper costumes poured out of the garage, while several more sprang from trees. A light went on inside the mansion and now the face of Atobe himself appeared at the window.

"You won't get away this time!" he roared, before turning, presumably to change out of his pajamas before capturing the intruders.

"Oh my god. We are so fucking screwed." Said Kamio.

"Yeah, I think that sums it up nicely." Replied Shinji.

Kamio drew a knife from his cloak. "Distract the guards!" He hissed to Shinji, readjusting his mask, "For just thirty seconds! I'll cut the pumpkin loose!"

"My job is to film the process of Kamio stealing a pumpkin from Atobe's yard." Shinji said to the camera. "Now he's asking me to work part-time as a distracter."

"Quit being such a jerk! And this is serious! Put the camera away for a minute! You know what will happen if we're caught?"

Shinji thought about this. "Will we be castrated?"

"Worse."

"How do you mean?"

"Atobe is known for his cruel and unusual forms of torture. It's evident from the attitudes of his teammates. Most likely we'll be locked in a room and forced to listen to the music of Miley Cyrus and the Jonas brothers…._at the same time_."

Shinji blanched. "No…" he breathed, staggering backwards. "That's…too cruel to imagine!"

"THEN HURRY!"

Shinji held the camera in one hand and with the other he fished out a deck of cards that was in his pocket. Why did he have cards in his pocket? Precisely for situations like this.

The storm troopers were nearly upon them now, loading their guns. Kamio crouched, hacking at the pumpkin and just as the storm troopers seemed upon them, Shinji held out the deck, spread out as a fan. He shouted the first thing that came into his head.

"Who wants to see a magic trick!?"

The storm troopers stopped running. They looked at one another and then back at Shinji. Taking advantage of their shock, Shinji advanced.

"Pick a card, any card! Show it to the rest, but not to me!"

There was a hesitant silence and then one of the bolder storm troopers slowly stepped forward and tugged a card from Shinji's deck. Shinji turned his head and closed his eyes while the storm trooper showed it to the other guards. When he had replaced the card in the deck, Shinji shuffled the pack and then drew a card out at random.

"Was _this_ your card?" he asked, holding up a three of clubs.

There was scattered applause.

Kamio finished cutting the pumpkin and he tucked it into his jacket, securely zipping it into place. It kind of looked like he was carrying a baby, but whatever.

"Shinji, we have to leave!" Kamio hissed. "Atobe will be out any minute!"

"But I didn't get to show them the really cool one I learned at tennis camp!" Shinji complained.

"You can do that later! We just need to distract them for a second so we can run for it!"

"Easier said than done." Shinji mumbled out of the corner of his mouth. "They probably won't be fooled easily. Atobe will have hired the best. We'll have to outwit them in a game of skills and cunning."

That gave Kamio and idea.

"Whoa!" he shouted, waving his arms like a windmill before pointing to the opposite end of the garden. "What's that!?"

The guards all turned to look.

Kamio grabbed Shinji's elbow and they ran for it.

XxXxX

"Goddam, that's like the thousandth time that's worked," Kamio panted, as he and Shinji made it halfway across the garden.

Atobe arrived in a silky lavender bathrobe, just as the stormtroopers began to realize that they had been tricked.

"Have you got them?" He demanded.

The storm troopers shifted their weight sheepishly.

Atobe roared in frustration. "GET THEM!" he bellowed, quite beside himself.

The storm troopers immediately sprinted after the two cloaked figures that were growing smaller and smaller in the distance.

"Idiots!" Atobe hissed furiously. "I suppose there was a _reason_ that Lord Sidious didn't want them."

He stormed back into the house, still fuming.

XxXxX

"Kamio…wait!" Shinji panted, trying to catch up to his friend.

Kamio was sprinting far ahead, but stopped at his friend's call. "They'll catch us!" He cried. "We have no time to stop! Now come on!"

"Whoa, WHOA, Kamio, wait a second!" Shinji cried, grabbing Kamio by the back of his shirt to stop him.

"What?" Kamio rounded.

"Kamio, this is a fourteenth century style rock garden! People really don't make them like this anymore; we have to take a quick shot with it!"

"Yeah, or NOT!"

"Come on, they won't catch up for at least another twenty seconds! There's enough time for a quick shot. You grab the rake and pretend to be organizing the waves!"

"Shinji, this is ridiculous!" Kamio dodged as a flare dart from the guns of the storm troopers narrowly missed his head. "We'll get killed out here!"

"Just really quick! The flare darts add effect! You can be all like, 'I'm a Zen Monk. There's people trying to shoot my head off but I'm just raking my garden.'"

Seeing that there was no chance of convincing Shinji to move, Kamio nearly tore his hair out in frustration. Idiotic though he felt, he grabbed the rake poised at the edge of the garden and began drawing lines.

"Excellent, Kamio." Said Shinji, sidestepping a laser bullet to get a better angle, camera pressed to his eye. "Now pose with the storm troopers in the background."

"SHINJI!"

Kamio literally sprang forward, grabbed Shinji, and dragged him away as the guards caught up.

The two of them rounded the corner of the mansion to get out of sight and then quickly dove into a rose bush for cover.

"Damn! I can't see anything!"

"It's okay, I'll put the camera into NightVision Mode."

Kamio said nothing.

"What's your problem? You'll thank me for taping this later!"

The two stopped bickering when the distinctive noise of hundreds of storm troopers boots passed them, evidently thinking they had continued ahead.

They both held their breath until the footsteps faded. Kamio hung his head in punctured anxiety.

Shinji broke the silence.

"We're in a bush." He said.

And no, he was not stating the obvious. He was documenting to the camera again.

"How we got into this bush is anyone's guess," Shinji continued, looking into the lens. "None of the other guys managed to cause so much ruckus just by breaking into Atobe's house. Kamio is exceptionally loud. He's also clumsy."

"Only because I can't ride my goddam rhythm!" Kamio shouted.

"Hey, what was that?" asked a storm trooper, hearing the shout.

"I don't know," another said. "But it sounded like it came from that rose bush!"

"Way to go, Akira." Said Shinji to the camera.

"Turn that camera off!"

The two of them were forced to vacate the bush and run for the entrance gate again for their grand escape.

Atobe saw them from his window.

"TWO DEATH EATERS ARE ESCAPING WITH MY PUMPKIN! STOP THEM!" he screeched. "DON'T LET THEM PASS THE POND! BURN THE BRIDGE!"

"But sir…" one of the storm troopers implored Atobe.

"I SAID DO IT!"

A storm trooper about one hundred yards behind Kamio and Shinji stopped short and withdrew a compact, ridged something from his vest. A Model 24 _Pretrarde _hand grenade.

Yeah, Atobe had officially lost his mind.

The storm trooper looked at it doubtfully before lobbing it into the air as hard and far as he could. Kamio and Shinji reached the bridge and sprinted to cross it. They managed to get to the other side just as the grenade landed on the bridge and exploded it. Both Kamio and Shinji were thrown off their feet, and rolled away from the impact, but neither was seriously injured.

"It's 2:30 am." Said Shinji into the camera. "Atobe just tried to blow us up. But we made it over the bridge just in time."

"Quite contrarily, his plan has actually backfired." Kamio added, while checking himself for wounds. "Now Atobe's gotten his _own_ guards stranded on the other side of the pond. What an idiot."

Shinji turned the focus back to himself. "I guess that grenade didn't kill us. It must not have been very good quality. Must have been one of those lame incendiary models. Heh. Atobe thought that would take us? He seriously thought he would catch us with that? He should have paid a little extra and invested in the far better quality _Sorore_ grenade. _That_ might have caused some damage."

"What a cheap bastard." Agreed Kamio, getting to his feet. "Now let's roll!"

Seeing that his plan had, in fact backfired, Atobe was beside himself with rage.

"You fools can't do anything right!" he screamed from his window. "I am _not_ going to allow this to happen a seventh time! That's it! I'm coming down myself!"

And so saying, he whipped off his purple nightgown and heaved himself out his window, intending to land catlike near to where the two thieves were standing.

…

…

…

Unfortunately, he undershot a bit, and landed in his own pond.

"NOO! Ore-sama's hair!" He cried. "Now Shishido's will be better!"

"There, there now." Said one of the storm troopers, kindly, trying to comfort him.

Atobe began to sob, and called for his storm troopers to fish him out of the pond. This distracted both Atobe and the entire force of guards and soon everyone was involved in the task of removing Atobe from his pond.

No one was paying the least bit of attention to the two thieves, who stood aside, feeling rather wrong footed.

"…Is this _seriously_ happening?" Shinji asked finally, still filming as three storm troopers tried to lift Atobe out of the pond but slipped and fell in themselves.

"Must be. Only we could have lives as ridiculous as these."

And so Kamio and Shinji calmly walked away from the Atobe mansion at a comfortable gait, with no one pursuing them or trying to shoot their heads off.

XxXxX

Two and a half blocks away, Shinji stopped dead, and fumbled with his camera.

"Shit!"

"What is it?"

Shinji looked up, his face white. "I forgot to put film in it!"

**XxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXx**

**....**

**....  
**

"Wow, that sucks." Said Yuuta. "Did you guys have to go get another pumpkin? Did he make you do hazing all over again?"

"Tachibana?" Kamio said. "Oh, actually, he kind of forgot."

Silence.

"He _forgot?_"

"Told you he was senile."

"Hey wait a minute, there's something I have to know!" Choutarou had gotten to his feet. He swayed for a few moments before gaining his balance, and then he pointed to Shinji. "How _did_ you do that magic trick?"

Shinji reached into his back pocket and pulled out the exact same set of cards that he had been carrying around with him that day.

"So I'm always ready," Shinji explained. He spread the cards out in a fan shape and then turned them over.

Every single one was a three of clubs.

"Oldest trick in the book." Said Shinji proudly.

"Weak." Said Ichiuma.

"So what'd you guys _do_ with these precious pumpkins?" Echizen sniffed.

"Well, what do you _think_ we did with them?" Asked Uchimura sarcastically.

No one wanted to answer for fear of saying the wrong thing.

"We cut them up into scary faces and played with them. Obviously." Said Shinji. "Those were some good times."

"Sure were." Agreed Kamio. "And after we were done playing, we had pie."

"Oh yes. Lots of pie." All the Fudomine boys chorused.

"Well, better than Kaidoh's story, anyway," said Ichiuma doubtfully, clapping a little bit.

"Oh yeah, and _that's_ saying a lot." said Ichirou sarcastically, ignoring the finger he got from Kaidoh. "I'm still not getting the 'best thing that ever happened to you' vibe from these stories. You guys have weird lives. Does anyone else have a story?"

* * *

**oOoOo**

* * *


	9. Don't Forget the Prince of Tennis

**Getting to Know Eachother** Part 3: _Don't Forget the Prince of Tennis  
_

* * *

**~oOoOo~**

* * *

Since at this point everyone was just pretty much wondering if Echizen was ever going to make an appearance, the Prince of Tennis suddenly found himself the center of attention for no apparent reason.

"Echizen, you're the Prince of Tennis," gurgled Touji, who seemed to have sunk deeper and deeper into his armchair throughout the evening. "Entertain us."

"Mada mada dane." said Echizen, even though it made no sense in the context. Because that's what Echizen does. No matter what's going on, or what was previously said, he just throws out his catchphrase and hopes that it somehow adds to the conversation. But anyway.

"C'mon, Echizen, for Seigaku!" implored Momoshiro.

"I don't have to do this because I can do a Twist Serve." said Echizen. "So step off."

"Echizen, are you _afraaaaaaaaaiiiiiid?_" drawled Kirihara. "Are you _chiiiiiiiickenn........?_"

"No, that's not it." said Echizen.

"Maybe Echizen doesn't have a special memory!" Momoshiro teased. "Haha, what a loser. We all have fun memories. But Echizen only has Karupin!"

Everyone started laughing.

"Che." Echizen got to his feet at these words; though he was so short, it hardly made a difference.

He wobbled to the front of the room. He pulled out a tennis racket from seemingly nowhere and pointed it at Momoshiro in his I'm-gonna-kick-your-ass way before resting it on his shoulder.

"You can say what you want about me." Echizen warned, "but not a word on Karupin."

Since this statement added nothing to the conversation, everyone ignored it. They waited in silence for Echizen to summon his best memory.

That…girl you mentioned….earlier." Echizen said finally, gestured his head towards Kamio. "That.....Ryuuzaki. She has a first name. It's Sakuno."

No one was quite sure what to say to this, so they didn't say anything. Echizen took their silence for anticipation, being the Prince of Tennis and all, and he paused for effect before continuing.

"I was playing tennis one day."

"Imagine _that._" said Hiyoshi. Everyone just told him to shut up though, and threw pillows at him. Because if there's someone who adds less to the conversation than Echizen, it's Hiyoshi.

Echizen looked mildly annoyed at the interruption, but continued.

"It was just me, whacking my tennis ball against the cold, hard brick of the school wall because everyone on the courts was too lame to play with me. I whacked the ball. Whack, whack, whack."

Everyone seemed to be enjoying the sound effects.

"So anyway," Echizen sniffed importantly, "I was so busy being awesome I hardly even heard it when this tiny little voice speaks behind me. I still remember." Echizen took a deep breath and put on a thin, high pitched voice like a mosquito.

_Ryoma-kun…_

"So I spin around, right? And I see Sakuno with braids down her back all decked out in a Yukimura head band and this _tiny_ little pink miniskirt."

A few of the guys exchanged knowing grins at this point.

"And of course, she's blushing before I even say anything back to her, because I'm just _that_ awesome."

"So I say:" Here Echizen inserted an absurdly deep, masculine voice.

_Oh. Hey Ryuzaki._ "Because I never call her by her first name to her face, even though she's my peer. Why? Because it makes me seem more awesome. And then, I suppose, the mere sound of my deep, masculine voice saying her name made her weak in the knees. She seemed to forget what she had approached me for at all. She puts one hand to her forehead and another to her flushed cheek and says:"

_Oh, Ryoma-kun…. _"before loosing her footing and swooning."

"You don't even _know_ what that word means." Hiyoshi griped quietly. He was just jealous, though.

The rest of the boys in the room were literally on the edge of their seats with anticipation. They hadn't expected to hear a story of one of them getting some action. And from _Echizen_, of all people!

"Well, go on boy, go on!" barked Ichiuma, speaking for everyone.

Echizen smiled indulgently.

"Well, even if she's annoying and her hair is too long, I'm such a _goddam_ gentleman, aren't I? I couldn't let the poor girl hurt herself just because I turned the charm on too high. So I dart forward with the super reflexes bestowed upon me, being the Prince of Tennis and all. And I catch her just before he hits the ground."

At this point, Choutarou gave a little gasp of delighted surprise. He was the only one who seemed to be enjoying the story for its _romantic_ side.

"So then, I'm stuck there on the ground holding this fainted girl in my arms, yeah? And I have no idea what to do."

"Why didn't you carry her to the nurse's office?" Shinji questioned.

"I tried." Echizen mumbled. "But I couldn't even stand up. She was too heavy."

Several boys sniggered at this, but Echizen continued like he hadn't heard.

"So I'm on the ground, putting aside the fact that I'm technically pinned, but anyway. I don't know what to do. At that moment though, her eyelids flutter. Like a delicate butterfly's wings about to take flight."

No one seemed very impressed with the simile.

"And slowly, she opens her eyes and looks up, and first thing she sees is _BAM,_ handsome me! Well, frankly I'm surprised that she didn't faint again but she just looks at me in this withered way and then reaches up her arms and puts them around my neck."

_Oh, Ryoma-kun, _"she said." _I love you. _

_I know. _"I replied."

"And then she blushes and sort of sits up a little, so that she can whisper into my ear. And you know what she says?"

The boys numbly shook their heads.

"She says:"

_Ryoma-kun, I want you to take my virginity, right now. _

"OKAY, _THAT'S_ IT!" Hiyoshi had gotten to his feet. "I don't _believe_ any of this shit anymore! And you're all _morons_ if you do."

Indeed, the word "virginity" seemed to have semi-snapped many of the boys back to their good drunken reason.

"I must admit, your story does not make a great deal of sense." Shinji commented. "After all, we've all met the girl in question and she's too shy to say more than five words to you at a time, let alone make such a request."

"He's a liar and a phony! Get him off stage!" Kirihara shouted, flinging his empty beer can at Echizen who somehow _didn't _dodge with his master reflexes. Kirihara, however, seemed to have lost a great deal of his own reflexes throughout the evening and missed by several feet.

The rest of the boys loudly booed and followed suit, throwing everything within five feet of them at The Prince of Tennis.

Echizen, surprisingly, made no move to defend himself, but merely shrugged and loped back to the general ping pong area.

"Mada mada dane," he muttered before sinking down into a comfortable lying position on the table.

"Ahem, well that was surprisingly disturbing…." Ichiuma and Ichirou said.

"Okay, seriously, what are you guys, the emcees, or something?" Asked Kamio. "Who asked for _your_ commentary at the end of each story?"

"Well Kamio, that's a great question." Said Ichirou. "And actually, I'm emcee-ing with Ichiuma because it's my divine right as a minor character, and also because our names sound similar, and therefore, funny together."

"They're nearly interchangeable." agreed Ichiuma.

"Are you going to say "that's a great question" after every question?" Hiyoshi asked.

Ichiuma responded this time. "Well that's a great question, Hiyoshi, and actually I'd like to implore you to ask yourself that before bothering us."

"Are you guys planning on shutting the hell up any time this evening so we can get on with the stories?" shouted Momoshiro.

"Well, that's a great question, and actually no, we aren't, Momoshiro." Replied Ichirou.

"Speaking of great questions," continued Ichiuma before anyone else could object, may we ask who would like to go next?"

David went, but nobody could understand his story. Turns out, when he's completely wasted, he only speaks French.

There was, however, a lot of action involved, and more than one swordfight, reenacted out by David on the coffee table for everyone's benefit. But after David fell off the table the fifth time, Choutarou had to stop the story although.

"Shh, David, just lie down." Choutarou soothed. "You are…in a word: wasted."

"Maaa…" David shrugged off Choutarou's words. "Si j'étais ivre, pense-tu qu je saurais que ceci est Yuuta?"(1) He slung his arm around the back of a wicker chair and grinned stupidly at them. When no one said anything, he answered his own question:

"_Je ne pense pas." _(2)

"Choutarou, hurry up and tell us the awesomest thing that ever happened to you before we all start speaking French, s'il vous plait!(3)" Kamio shouted. Then he slapped a hand over his mouth.

Choutarou had to think. He shut his eyes, wracking through his memory. He remembered all those hours he spent training with Shishido, watching him grow to his full potential. He remembered the romantic meeting they had had in the church where Shishido had prayed to the Virgin Mary. He remembered helping Shishido comb his shining hair back when it had been long…

Then his eyes lit up. He knew which his most special memory was. He bashfully cleared his throat and waited for David to be subdued before starting his story.

"Well," Choutarou began, "last year one weekend I was at home watching T.V. And before you all start reprimanding me, it was eight o'clock in the evening. I had just gotten home from evening tennis practice and I definitely had the _right_ to be relaxing."

Choutarou paused for a moment, feeling like he should build up the action somewhat.

"Well, just as Dragon Ball Z came on, my mom comes into the living room and tells me that we need some groceries. So I said, 'okay, then why don't you go get it?' I didn't want to miss Dragon Ball Z, you see."

Everyone nodded understandingly.

"Well for some reason, my mom got kind of mad when I said that and she went into this rant about how, as the man in the family, I needed to take some responsibility. And then she basically threatened to cancel satellite, so I had to go to the grocery store and pick up the stuff for her."

"Since I can't drive yet, and she only asked for a few things, I decided to go on my bike, which is also better for the environment. To make a boring story short, I got to the store more or less uneventfully and even picked up a discount Fruits Basket manga on my way out."

"Fruits Basket?" Uchimura echoed.

"For, ahem, my sister." Choutarou quickly added.

Every exchanged skeptical looks.

"I get out of the store," Choutarou hurriedly continued, "and put the stuff on my bike and biked home."

At this point, most people were wondering if the story was ever going to get a plot. Choutarou seemed to realize this, and he got to the point.

"I parked my bike in the garage and took the groceries inside and gave them to my mom. She gave me a kiss on the cheek and said I was a Good Boy. Flushed with my success, I proceeded to re-nestle myself onto the sofa. But then I realized that something was wrong." Choutarou paused dramatically. "Oh yes, something was very, very wrong. I could just feel it. I somehow felt….vulnerable. I got up and checked my hair. Nothing there. And my clothes were all perfectly intact, and my tennis bag! That's when I realized….."

Drumroll effect.

"My wallet had gone missing! It had been stolen!"

Everyone gasped.

"I admit for a moment I was too shocked for this information to properly register, but then I came to my senses. I first bolted up the staircase to my room and ransacked the entire place audaciously."

"Isn't it weird how Choutarou's vocabulary gets bigger the more he drinks?" Kaidoh commented vaguely.

"When I found nothing," Choutarou continued, "I consulted my muse for five minutes."

Everyone stared blankly at him.

"…It means I sat down and thought." Choutarou explained.

"Then why didn't ya just _say_ that, ya moron?" Kirihara shouted, tempted to throw another beer can.

"ANYway," Choutarou plowed on, "my goddam muse was just as baffled as I was, so I sent it to the corner and headed back downstairs where I searched the living room, kitchen, and bathroom." He paused. "Incidentally, my muse has never really been of any use to me at all. I ended up selling it to Shisido, along with my self respect, as a bargain deal for two packs of gum."

"You sold your self respect for _gum_?" Kamio echoed disbelievingly.

"Two packs." Choutarou said defensively. "And it was fruit flavored."

Everyone mentally slapped their foreheads, but then urged Choutarou to continue, not because they wanted to know what would happen, but so the random tangents would end. Sensing this, Choutarou concluded,

"And then, at that moment, when I had lost all hope, one last idea occurred to me; one last hope of where it might be. Without even putting on a jacket despite the cold of the night, I raced out into the garage to examine my parked bike. And you know what? I looked at my bike and I saw…that my wallet was in the back basket!"

"Huh?" Everyone sagged with punctured anticipation.

"Yes, it's true!" Choutatou cried, quite beside himself. "It had fallen out of my bag, but onto the back basket! Can you _believe_ that? It was a _four mile_ ride to the store, but it had stayed in place!"

"Oh….my…..God….." was all Uchimura could say.

"Yes, incredible, isn't it?" said Choutarou excitedly, mistaking his speechlessness for awe.

"You're…kidding, right?" Kirihara piped up. "That was the grand story? You lost your wallet and then found it again in two seconds? Not to be ironic by sounding like Shishido or anything but…"

"_**LAME**_**"** everyone chorused.

"What are you talking about?!" cried Choutarou, flabbergasted. "Do you have any idea _how many_ people lose their wallets each year? What a hassle it is to cancel all your cards and get a new identification? Do you realize how…_incredible_ it is that I missed all that by a thin, black wire basket?" His voice cracked.

Everyone stared blankly. "Sorry, man…" Yuuta began, somewhat uneasily, "it was just a little anticlimactic, ya know?"

"Anti…._it was caught on the basket all along_. Don't you see how _awesome _that is? **IT'S COOL!**" his voice shot up an octave and a half on these last words.

XxXxX

And that's how Choutarou became Kaidoh's new pariah-pal.

* * *

**oOoOo**

* * *

**A/N:  
**_French:  
(1) If I were drunk, would I know that this is Yuuta?  
(2) I don't think so.  
(3) Please._

**I'm thinking of trying something here: if you haven't noticed, it's a person from each school is telling a story. If anyone actually cares, you can read all of the stories (which ought to be done in a few more chapters) and then vote for your favorite! The winner will get some sort of...glory or inclusion in the next story arc or something equally cliché like that. It should be fun. :)  
**


	10. A Christmassy Tale

**Getting to Know Eachother: Part 4-** _Santa Trumps Frosty_

* * *

**~oOoOo~**

* * *

"MY TURN, MY TURN!" cried Kirihara, bounding to the front of the room before anyone could demean him, refuse to listen to his story, or kick him out. All of which were definite possibilities.

"You guys are gonna love this!" he guaranteed, smiling at them all. "Not only does it not SUCK but it's got, like, symbolism and motifs and crap."

"Kirihara, what's a motif?" Yuuta asked, dead serious.

"It..." Kirihara became a bit flustered. "That's not the point! This story is not only awesome but it's also deep!"

"Well, we _do_ like deep things..." Everyone admitted.

"Good! Then be quiet!" Kirihara shouted. "It was last year, months before the playoffs to the finals began. Before I had even heard of many of you. That was when it happened. The event that would forever model the way I looked at life......"

***

**XxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxX**

_It was Christmas Eve. But the time for families was not until later. It was currently about nine o'clock in the morning; the dedicated Rikkaidai regulars rose and pieces of their totally unimportant morning rituals and means of getting to school were shown in clips for no apparent reason other than to lengthen the episode.  
It was a cool, windy day, hinting at snow later. The sort of day that promised a dazzling array of Hakugei, courtesy of Fuji Syuusuke. However, this is not a story of the overrated tensai of Seigaku. If this story ever gets going, we may see what it is really about. So as best to avoid getting distracted by random details, we shall skip to when the regulars were already paired up, and volleying back and forth on their school courts, except for Sanada, who for some reason doesn't have to practice, and Yukimura, who was currently dying in the hospital of a terrible disease. _

_Our subject of interest is Kirihara, who was on the losing end of a volleying match with Yanagi on the most outlying court._

Yanagi delivered a decisive hit, and Kirihara ran for it, but missed, ending up panting on all fours. Yanagi came to the net and was on the verge of saying some very cliché victory line, but changed his mind and instead congratulated Kirihara in a condescending way, telling him it had been a good match.

"You're too good, Yanagi-senpai," Kirihara gasped breathlessly, mopping up his sweaty forehead with the back of his hand.

"Ehh," Yanagi shrugged carelessly. "Not really. Few cool serves, fast footwork, and some data plays that are already overused by Inui. Nothing new."

"But I feel like _everyone's_ got a cool move except for me." Kirihara complained, getting to his feet and coming to the net to shake Yanagi's hand. "I mean you and Your Data, Marui and his cake, Niou's cosplaying, Yagyuu's golf tennis, Sanada's family line thingy, Yukimura 'nuff said…" Kirihara trailed off, perhaps pensively or perhaps because he couldn't think of anything for Jackal.

"Well, you know your skills are still pretty good, even if you don't have some specific move that you unleash relentlessly." Yanagi comforted. "You don't even really have to know anything about tennis to be an acknowledged player. Look at Sengoku."

Sanada blew a whistle to signal that it was time for a brief break and the pair headed over to the water station.

"But I _want_ something special." Whined Kirihara, scrabbling at the lid of his water bottle.

"Poor little Akaya," drawled Niou, who was passing with Marui, Niou and Jackal and had picked up on what they were talking about. "Doesn't have a trademark move."

"How did _you _guys get your moves?" Demanded Kirihara.

Feeling in the Christmas spirit, Yagyuu said sarcasticall, "Oh simple, just took a little visit to Santa Clause on the most magical night of the year and he gives you a great gift and then tells you everything you need to know about tennis and whatnot."

"_Really_?" Kirihara's eyes had gone as round as quarters. "Santa Clause? That's so cool!"

Yagyuu froze midway through the act of toweling himself off.

"You know, Yagyuu's right," Yanagi agreed, catching on. "I think that you would find that many of your problems and life's ambitions would be more easily solved if you had a consultation with the spirits of the future. A.K.A. Santa Clause"

"So you think I should try to meet him?" Kirihara ventured cautiously.

"Oh, well of course!" Said Yanagi, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "Only someone as callous as the cold-hearted bastard, Marui, could find anything not to like about Santa."

Marui shrugged. "Better Santa than Frosty." He muttered.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Kirihara asked immediately.

Marui gazed levelly at his kouhai.

"…They say he's a jolly happy soul." Said Kirihara in a small voice.

"With a corncob pipe and a button nose and two eyes made out of coal." Added Niou.

"There must have been magic in that old silk hat they found," Yagyuu continued, "for when they placed it on his head, he came to life."

"He did?!" Kirihara damn near squealed.

"Of course he did." Yanagi smiled genially.

"And what did he do then?" Asked Kirihara eagerly.

"He raped the town's children." Marui answered bluntly.

Kirihara gasped and even the rest of the third years minus Sanada looked shocked. Then Kirihara's face turned from white to red.

"I don't believe you!" He cried. "Frosty is a kind soul that loves children!"

"Suit yourself." Marui turned to leave. "But just hope you don't meet him alone in a dark alley at night."

"Now, now, Marui, no need to be a cynic." Jackal chided lightly, just because he hadn't had a line yet.

"No but seriously, you should consider trying to meet him him." Yanagi said in a deadpan tone.

"He's right actually," agreed Marui. "I met him once as well. He really inspired me to improve myself and showed me that the only way I can make a name for myself in this anime is by eating inordinate amounts of sugar. That way the fangirls would be able to write amply about me in cute ways where I'm always overdosing."

"It's true." Affirmed Yagyuu, nodding as well. "I had nothing until he took a look at me and decided that I should pursue the gentleman front by pairing up with Niou. This technique would emphasize both his trickster-ness and my politeness. And look at us now! We're like, the second most popular pairing at Rikkaidai."

"Totally!" Niou interjected enthusiastically. Then he paused, frowning, and turned to Yagyuu. "Wait, then who's the number one pai—

"What the hell is going on here?" Sanada ironically interrupted at that point. "I whistled for you to return to your volleying three minutes ago!"

"But Fukubuchou, they were telling me about Santa Claus and how he really has the ability to see into people and help them realize their full potential!" Kirihara breathlessly informed his vice captain.

"Is that _so_?" Sanada's eye twitched as he turned on the knot of third years, who wished that they could dissolve in that one moment.

Most of them closed their eyes, bracing for a slap, except for Yanagi, who opened his.

Sanada, however, surprised them all.

"Well, they're absolutely right!" He crisply approved, nodding once to the sempais and turning back to Kirihara. "I wasn't sure that you were old enough to hear it, but if they all think that the time is ripe as well, then it must be right. The truth is, nearly every anime character goes to the wonderful man at least once in their lives to learn how to maximize his popularity. It's a wonderful practice. Did you know, that's the origin of my bitchslapping?"

Everyone was silent. Kirihara, because he was so awed that the sempais had been telling the truth—for if Sanada said so, then it had to be the truth—and the third years were speechless with shock that Sanada would do something as laid back as go along with a joke.

Sanada put a hand on Kirihara's shoulder in a fatherly way.

"I think you should definitely try to meet him, Akaya. It would be a growing experience for you and then I can have a little talk with your sempais in your absence."

The third years sagged, hearing this. They knew there had to be a catch.

"Oh, thank you, thank you!" Kirihara's eyes were alight with his innocence and he wrung Sanada's hand and then bolted to the changing rooms, intending on getting home as soon as possible to get ready for that evening.

This left Sanada and the other five regulars in a rather awkward silence. He turned slowly to face them.

"Listen, Genichirou…" began Yanagi awkwardly, although he did not know what he was going to say to justify himself. But Sanada was leaning towards them.

"Bloody brilliant." He said.

The other five did not know how to respond. No one had known that Sanada had a sense of humor.

Perhaps sensing this he added, "Work and dedication are important, but when you see an opportunity as golden as that, you've got to....what's the expression?...._go_ for it, man."

Marui laughed nervously, astonished at this new side of the vice captain, as were they all. Sanada laughed too, and after a moment Niou joined in, and then Jackal and Yagyuu, and finally Yanagi, because he felt left out. They stood there, laughing uncontrollably for a few minutes.

"Fukubuchou...I...I never knew you had such a good sense of humour!" Exclaimed Marui, wiping a tear from his eye.

"Yes...well...." Sanada suddenly stopped laughing.

Everyone else stopped too, instantly aware that something was up.

"You're all a bunch of morons!" Sanada snapped. "Go run 100 laps! Now!"

"Awwwwwwww!" they all groaned and set out.

"Figures. I knew Sanada didn't have a sense of humor." Niou griped.

"Yeah, well, what can you expect from fuck-your-buchou?" Renji asked under his breath.

"I HEARD THAT!" Sanada shouted, blushing furiously. "200 laps!"

**That night….**

_Yay, this is going to be the most awesomest night ever! Like the night I met the tooth fairy…only a thousand times awesomer! _Kirihara thought. _  
_

He was so excited that he was pacing his room, unable to fall asleep, although he had heard that Santa didn't come until all the children were asleep. Finally, at about eleven, he decided that he should at least pretend to sleep so that Santa would come. Kirihara curled up in his Anakin Skywalker blanket and tried to relax. In his excitement, he had not picked up at all on the hushed voices outside his house or the faint sound of his front door opening.....

XxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXx

.....Niou sighed angrily and plucked at his itchy beard which he was ninety percent sure was going to give him a rash tomorrow. Damn thing had more nettles in it than a swamp.

It was a series of peculiar, out of character, and unfortunate events worthy of Lemony Snicket that found the trickster of Rikkaidai decked out in a red woolen suit trimmed with fluffy white polyester. A pillow was strapped to his abdomen and it kept slipping, so every five minutes he had to discreetly hitch it up. A fuzzy white mustache made of cotton balls and scotch tape was adhered to his upper lip, which had begun to sweat from the heat of the clothes, so it was on the verge of falling off any moment.

Niou had tried to argue, no doubt, but there had been no argument good enough when Sanada had asked quite plainly which of the Rikkaidai regulars most resembled Santa Clause. "If you were ready to have Akaya believe such things, you must have been ready to back it up." Sanada had said sarcastically. Niou privately wondered how the hell Yukimura had approved this whole operation.

Anyway, Sanada had decided, partly as a punishment for tricking Kirihara, partly to prove he had a sense of humor, and partly just for his own perverted enjoyment, that Akaya would _not_ be finding out this year that Santa Clause did not exist. Oh yes, when he crept down the staircase in his bunny slippers and scarlet robe, Santa would be puttering about the tree, putting out gifts for his favorite demon possessed child.

Which was where Niou came in. He would be posing as the magical, advice-giving white guy for Kirihara's enjoyment.

On the other hand, though, Niou had to admit that he was lucky in a way. Marui was currently wearing what looked like a shrunken green tutu (which it probably was) for his costume as an elf. Yagyuu, Yanagi, and Jackal were outside Akaya's house on their goddam _knees_ in the snow, being reindeer, while hitched to an old sled of Sanada's. Jackal kneeled in the front with a shiny red knob on the end of his nose. When Jackal had asked why he had to be Rudolph, Sanada had simply replied, "because you're black". How that made sense was anyone's guess. Anyway, the three of them were currently freezing their asses off, not to mention more embarrassed than Sanada must have been after losing to Echizen.

Speaking of Sanada, he was calmly strolling around the outside of Kirihara's house with a video camera, taping the predicament of them all with a peppermint hot chocolate in one hand. He was vaguely considering sending the video as a Christmas gift to Yukimura.

The five third years minus Sanada were all just praying for midnight, so they could get this stupid operation over with......

XxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxX

........Kirihara also couldn't wait for midnight, but for quite a different reason. He knew that when the clock struck twelve, the fun began. This was the day where he would meet the man who had defined the lives of so many before him. There was nothing standing between him and the highest position in the popularity polls now. Well, nothing except that damn Fuji Syuusuke.

To everyone's immense relief, the clock finally struck once…twice…three times…blahblahblah…twelve.

Kirihara wrenched off his blanket and bounded out of bed into his fluffy bunny slippers that he had kept nearby. Racing out of his room, he snatched his crimson house robe off the hook near the door. Upon reaching the summit of the staircase, Kirihara stopped short and gazed out into his living room. He could see a plump silhouette near his Christmas tree.

"Santa…" Kirihara breathed, hardly able to believe his eyes. Then loudly, "_Santa!_" He cried, bounding down the staircase, taking steps four at a time.......

xXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxX

......."Santa!"

_Damn._ Niou hastily straightened in a cold sweat. He had been idly examining the Kirihara family collection of manga and was unpleasantly jolted by the sound of Kirihara's eager, joyful voice. What the hell was he supposed to do now? Damn that Marui! He had eaten all the cookies and he, Santa, could really use a boost of sugar right about now to get him thinking! _Rather than milk and cookies they should leave alcohol out for the poor man_, Niou realized.

"Oh Santa," Kirihara gasped, reaching the floor landing, his eyes glowing. "You really made it!"

"Ahem…of course I did!" Niou invented wildly, while Marui observed from the shadows of the kitchen, doubled over in silent laughter. "How could I not with my superb reindeer?"

"Rudolph's here?" Kirihara squealed and bolted to the window to look out. "Oh no, it's too foggy, I can't see out—

"That's okay!" Niou shouted, blocking Kirihara's view out the window with his body. "Don't you want to see what Santa's brought you, child?"

"May I?" Kirihara was oozing joy.

"Sure, sonny." Niou wouldn't have been talking like this if, in the instant that he had glanced out the window when he prevented Akaya from looking out, he hadn't seen Sanada give him a death glare saying quite plainly, "Screw up one thing for him and you die."

"Let's just see what I've got," Niou said, rummaging around through his tennis bag that Sanada had forced him to paint brown for the occasion. "What would you like this year, son?"

"Oh, anything, Santa!" Kirihara was quite beside himself and wouldn't have minded if he had gotten a dictionary.

Niou pretended to feel around through the bag for something suitable to give his kouhai, although there was only one real gift inside. The rest was empty tissue boxes and Styrofoam squares that Sanada had filled the bag with to give it more shape. Niou finally produced a box with a logo of a dash mark on the front. He presented it to Kirihara, who accepted it excitedly and examined the top.

"Nike," he read uncertainly, pronouncing the word as if it rhymed with "bike".

"It's Nik-E, you dunderhead," Niou hissed under his breath.

"What was that, Santa?" Kirihara looked up, unable to believe that Santa had just called him stupid.

Niou laughed tensely. "Nothing! Just open it!"

Kirihara obliged, lifting the orange lid off the box and peeling back the tissue paper that lined the box.

"Whoa!"

He produced a pair of green Chuck Taylor wannabes.

"These are really cool, Santa!" He cried, examining the shoes from every angle.

_Damn straight._ Sanada had forced Niou, as Santa, to buy a gift for Kirihara, and a nice one at that, and Niou had been forced to spend all of his birthday money on the shoes.

Niou forced a smile. "Well, I'm glad you like them," he said, and it was half true. "The great thing is, they're not only cool looking, but you can wear them while you're playing your favorite sport. Niou put on a misty, faraway look, like he was reading Kirihara's mind. "You play tennis, right?"

"Wow! That's right!" Kirihara was in awe. "You really _can _read minds!" Kirihara beamed, making a mental note to ask for career advice later. He looked down at the canvas shoes and then back up at Santa. "These are super-cool, Santa, but you know, I don't actually think they would work all that well while I'm playing tennis."

Niou froze. "…What do you mean, 'they wouldn't work well'?"

"No, no, no, don't get me wrong!" Kirihara's eyes widened innocently. "They're great shoes, but I just don't think they're for running around in."

"Not good…not good for…" Niou had spent all his birthday money on those shoes. He would be damned if they weren't good for _everything_.

Seeing that Santa was on the verge of freaking out, Kirihara said again, "I really like them!"

"Like them!" Niou screamed. "_Like them?_ They're amazing! You can wear them _all_ the time, whether you're at a party or in a tennis match! I read it online! They're **tennis** shoes for God's sake!"

"Tennis shoes?" Kirihara furrowed his brow. "Where did you get these, Santa?"

"I bought them off Zappos!" Niou roared.

"An American site? I thought so." Kirihara affirmed, nodding. "To tell you the truth Santa, I think in English, 'tennis shoe' is just a general term meaning 'any kind of shoe that provides full coverage and is good for walking'. It doesn't necessarily mean that the shoe is good for tennis."

"Oh, really? Thanks, I didn't realize!" Niou snarled sarcastically. "I guess I should have consulted Mr.-English-Hot-Shot here before buying!"

"Hey, how did you know English is my worst subject?" asked Kirihara, not noticing the insult at all. "You really _are_ amazing!"

Niou slapped his forehead and turned away from the younger boy, pressing his forehead against the cool window in an attempt to get his temper under control.

Kirihara seemed to realize finally that Santa was deeply unhappy and he watched the fat man sadly, still clutching the shoes lovingly.

After about one minute of silence, Kirihara slowly approached Santa and said in a small voice, "Well, I really do like them, sports shoes or not."

Then he lifted his arms and wrapped them around the torso of Santa from behind, burying his face into the back of the red jacket.

Niou felt nothing but shock. Despite his frustration at the situation he was in and the stupidity of his teammates, he felt strangely touched that Kirihara had so much love in his heart for a man that he did not even know existed until a few minutes ago.

Niou sighed exhaustedly and shut his eyes. "I'm glad you like them, son."

They stood like that for a few moments, then Kirihara unwound his arms and stepped back.

Oops.

Guess that costume wasn't so well made. As Kirihara moved back, the pillow in Niou's jacket slipped and fell out from under his shirt.

There was a brief silence. Then Kirihara screamed so loudly that he woke Marui, who had fallen asleep in the kitchen, and snapped the bored-to-tears regulars outside out of their daze.

"Y-Y-You're not Santa!" Kirihara cried, backing up, and tripping over the carpet, still clutching the shoes to his chest.

"Akaya, please!" Niou panicked. "I can explain!"

"Who are you!?" Kirihara shrilled. In one darting movement, the younger boy sprang forward and ripped off the moustache from Niou's face.

He gasped.

"Niou-senpai!"

Realizing that his disguise had been foiled, Niou bowed his head and covered his face. Then, very slowly, he unbuttoned his far-too-hot jacket and peeled off the nettled beard. "…'sup, kid?"

Kirihara, surprisingly, laughed. "Thank goodness," he mumbled, running one hand through his curls. "When I first realized it was a fraud….for a second I thought…. maybe Frosty…"

Niou rolled his eyes. Marui had made them all paranoid.

"But putting that aside, what the hell are you doing in my house?" Kirihara questioned.

Niou was spared answering because at that moment, the front door opened and Sanada entered, tucking his video camera away calmly into a satchel.

"That was beautiful, you guys." He said solemnly, regarding them seriously. "Good work, Niou." Then he turned to Kirihara. "I tried to protect your innocence and keep your belief in Santa Clause alive, Akaya, at great personal expense—Niou rolled his eyes—but you discovered the truth anyhow." Sanada bowed his head. "Please accept our humblest apologies."

"So…none of it was real?" Kirihara sadly asked, staring at his feet.

"Well, you can keep the shoes," Sanada said, earning a glare from Niou, "but pretty much, yeah, it was all a joke."

"I see," Kirihara sighed heavily and suddenly looked five years older. "I knew it was too good to be true. The presents, the fortunetelling, the magic….one person can't have it all." He looked up. "But I appreciate your efforts to keep me believing." His two sempais nodded somberly. "Everyone has to grow up sometime, right?"

The room was quiet then.

"So," said Kirihara, "where's the rest of the team?"

Sanada and Niou showed Kirihara where the rest of the boys were hiding and they all had a good laugh, and then Kirihara stood on his doorstep, bidding goodnight to all of them as they parted to go home. He was still cradling the shoes.

_That was when it happened. As the regulars were preparing to leave Kirihara's house and he stood alone on the doorstep, watching his own breath puff out before him like smoke from a train. He heard a distinct laugh and his head and all the regulars turned to its source, the sky._

_Over the moon, Kirihara could just make out the merest shadow of a sleigh and something pulling it, gliding effortlessly through the night air…yet the shape was strangely familiar…_

_"IT'S SANTA!" Kirihara screamed, instantly forgetting everything he had said in his mini-speech seconds before...._

**XxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxX**

*****  
**

"And that's the night I realized that Santa Clause exists." Said Kirihara. He smirked at all of them, stretching his arms over his head. "So whatcha think? Pretty awesome, huh?"

"Do Japanese people even celebrate Christmas?" Touji asked vaguely.

"Your story didn't really make sense." Shinji said.

"Whaddaya mean, playa?" Kirihara asked.

"Well, how could you have known things about the times that you weren't even there?"

Kirihara pondered this in silence. "...various...people filled me in." he said finally.

No on really thought that was a good explanation, but since we all kind of like Kirihara despite his attitude, they clapped and let him sit back next to them instead of next to Kaidoh and Choutarou.

"But on the other hand," Ichiuma got to his feet and suddenly pulled a microphone out of nowhere, "Coming up next time....."

"Yuuta's tale!" cried Ichirou.

"Brought to you by........YUUTA!" They both screamed.

Yuuta sat in the corner looking pissed off and slightly dreading the next chapter.

* * *

**oOoOo**

* * *

**A/N**:  
I can't quite remember now, but I think I once read somewhere that Kirihara still believes in Santa Clause. I decided to.....expand on this idea a little.

Look forward to supplementary reading: Santa vs. Frosty! :)

Someday I'll write a sentence without a smiley at the end. But that day won't be for a while.


	11. The Tragic Life of Keisuke Nakamura

***Bear with me: long story, but worth it!  
Warning:** **Sexual References and Utter Insanity **

_The Best Thing That Ever Happened to Yuuta_  
OR  
_The Worst Thing That Ever Happened to Nakamura Keisuke_ ('cause there's really no difference)

* * *

**~oOoOo~**

* * *

"Yuuta, go." said Kamio, since he couldn't think of a better transition at the moment. Which is fair enough, I suppose, since he was supposed to be wasted anyway.

"Yeah, go, GO!" trilled Kirihara. "And let's skip the foreplay this time. I have a feeling this is going to be a long story."

"Be reasonable, Kirihara, there's no possible way that you could know that," said Choutarou logically.

Choutarou got an Asahi dumped on his head.

"Kirihara's right," said Yuuta, clearing his throat. "Let's just get to it. I'm going to tell you a story about a young man who made some very poor decisions."

"Oh, God, you're not talking about yourself, are you?" asked Kamio.

Yuuta frowned. "No."

"Well good, 'cuz I hate it when people talk about themselves in third person."

"Then I wouldn't recommend Lord of the Rings." Said Yuuta. "But that's for later. No tangents this time."

Yuuta cleared his throat again. "Nakamura injured me repeatedly throughout elementary school, but when he dared to insult me before the one I loved, I vowed revenge. He, of course, would have no idea. Sharp though he may be with words or actions, his mind was unalterably dull and my bland smile would reveal nothing."

"......"

"....Who's Nakamura? What did he do?" Shinji ventured cautiously.

Yuuta sighed heavily. "It was years ago........."

*******

**XxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXXxXxXxXxXxXxX**

*****  
**

........_Ten year old Yuuta had no worries on his mind save for his imminent graduation from fifth grade: the ultimate honor and coming of age. He was carefree, high-spirited and trusting young boy, untainted by the coarse realities of adulthood. How was he to know, when mounting the bus to return home that fateful Wednesday afternoon that all that was about to change forever?_

Nakamura Keisuke sat at the back of the bus, surrounded by clouds of friends and giggling girls, whom he charmed with his suave, sixth graders wit. With an innate grace to his stature and a pleasant soccer athlete's build, he was the envy of all the boys in his year and the heartthrob of all the girls, save for one, the one he really wanted...Mayuri Yasukawa. Every so often he would glance at her, sitting at the front of the bus, and run a hand through his hair after making a joke at another boy's expense, hoping she had noticed. In a word: an asshole.

Yuuta had learned from living with his brother that it was best to avoid the big kids altogether. They never brought anything but trouble. And anyhow, his own crush Kazuko Sato rode this bus and if possible, he didn't want to make a fool of himself in front of her.

Easier said than done.

Nakamura was growing frustrated and desperate when Mayuri would still pay him no attention. He started to flirt with one of the girls near him in an attempt to make her jealous.

"Yo, hands _off_," one of his friends said, leaning over to separate Keisuke from the blushing girl. "You can have anyone; she's _mine_."

"Oh yeah, tough guy?" Asked Nakamura, sensing a good opportunity for a fight. "And whatcha going to do about it?"

In response, his friend grabbed Nakamura's hat off his head and held it out of reach and they began to fight, but not seriously, for possession. They both stopped when the bus driver shouted at them to, and Nakamura's hat had fallen to the ground. He ducked down to get it. Then he saw it.

Lying on the floor of the bus, semi pasted there actually, was a thin, rubber thing that looked like the finger of a rubber glove that had been separated from the rest.

Nakamura's heart pounded in excitement. He quickly pointed it out to his friends and a plan formed in his head, which he whispered into their ears. They laughed and slapped him high five.

"God, it looks _used_!" One of his friends whispered gleefully.

Here was his chance! This would crack even Mayuri up! All he needed was…..

Nakamura cast his eyes about the bus for a victim and his gaze landed on little Yuuta, sitting all alone six rows in front of him, quietly staring out the window.

Nakamura straightened up. "YO, KID!" he called. "You, with the "x" on your head!"

Realizing he was the one being called, Yuuta turned around slowly in fear. Why was this big kid calling him out?

But Nakamura wore a good natured grin. "Come here!" He called, beckoning young Yuuta. "Don't worry, I won't hurt you! I just want to offer you a good proposition!"

Yuuta hesitated. But he knew that however much it sounded like a request, it wasn't. He had no choice. Leaving his backpack behind, he made his way to the back of the bus. Nakamura's friends parted so that Yuuta could sit next to Nakamura. Nakamura slung his arm around the younger boy in a friendly way. "It's your lucky day, pal!" he said in a loud, carrying voice so that Mayuri would hear. "I'm willing to offer you a prize if you do a very simple little task!"

All of Nakamura's friends snickered.

"What's the task?" Asked Yuuta uncertainly.

"Oh it's easy!" said Nakamura. He bent over and signaled for Yuuta to do the same. When they both had a view of underneath the bus seats, Nakamura pointed to the white rubbery thing. "Just touch that." He said. "I'll pay you 20 yen."

"Just to touch it?" asked Yuuta incredulously.

"Yeah, sure!" said Nakamura, while his friends looked like they were trying very hard not to laugh again. "You know what? I'll even up it—if you put that thing on your index finger, I'll pay you _100 _yen."

"Are you serious?" Yuuta couldn't believe it. This guy would pay him 100 yen just to put a detached piece of a glove onto his finger? This was too much!

Figuring that he could impress Kazuko with his daring, Yuuta grinned and said, "Sure thing!"

He reached down and ripped the glove finger off the floor. _I can't believe he's throwing away money like this. What a dumbass._ He thought. Yuuta put it on his finger. He lifted his hand to show the boys. They roared with laughter.

So did all the other sixth graders on the bus. Only Yuuta and the other fifth graders looked confused.

"....What's so funny?" Yuuta asked finally.

"Oh......nothing.....absolutely......nothing!" Gasped Nakamura, wiping tears from his eyes as he laughed. "It's......just......that.....the.....thing......on.....your....finger...."

"What about it?" asked Yuuta defensively.

"It's a condom!" Cried Nakamura and they all burst into fresh peals of laughter.

XxXxXxXxXxXxXxxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXx

Yuuta walked home alone. He didn't know what a condom was, but he had gathered from the laughter that it was bad. He had taken the rubber thing off immediately and demanded his money. But the bastard wouldn't pay up! Yuuta had argued with him so long that he had missed his stop and then he had had to get off at the next one and walk an extra mile to get home. _That bastard…_ Yuuta thought. _That double crossing bastard…How dare he make fun of me like that in front of Kazuko……I wonder what a condom is…?_

Yuuta asked his mother that when he arrived at home. She took him on his lap and they had a long talk.

That night, dinner was an awkward affair. Yuuta's mother seemed quite disturbed by Yuuta's question, while Syuusuke looked a cross between amused and furious. Neither Yuuta's father nor Yumiko was home. Yuuta's mother softly suggested to Yuuta that he go and speak to Nakamura before school the next day, and try to sort out the matter pleasantly, without bad feelings. Syuusuke looked like he didn't think much of this proposal.

After dinner, Yuuta's mother left the kitchen, asking the boys to clean up. Yuuta moodily removed the dishes from the table and brought them to the sink, where Syuusuke washed them. They worked quietly for about ten minutes. Then when the job was done and Yuuta turned to leave, he felt Syuusuke grab his elbow. "Don't you want dessert?" He asked, holding out a box of ice cream. Yuuta nodded and they sat together.

Syuusuke seemed to know that Yuuta was silently fuming and waited calmly for an outburst. When Yuuta didn't speak however, he ventured to ask how Yuuta's day was. When Yuuta still didn't answer, Syuusuke inquired as to the good health of Keisuke Nakamura. That was it.

"I hate him!" Yuuta burst out. "He's completely ruining my life! He's a bully and he teases me and embarrasses me in front of my friends! And he's convinced he's _so_ cool! All he ever does is make my life suck!"

"You know...." said Syuusuke thoughtfully, taking a bite of his ice cream. "All those problems could be solved by simply killing him."

"....."

"....."

"....."

"....."

"You have problems!" Yuuta screeched and exited the kitchen, leaving his ice cream behind.

Syuusuke frowned. "Was it something I said?" He wondered aloud.

XxX

After giving the matter some thought, Yuuta opted to take his mother's advice over Syuusuke's. He angrily brushed his hair in the mirror and straightened his collar the next morning, and made up his mind to walk to Nakamura's house before school started, intending, if nothing else, to at least get an apology. After looking up Nakamura's address in the directory, he stormed across town to the house. This wasn't his ideal way of solving things, but he had to try negotiations.

He only had to knock once on the door before it was opened by a tall woman, who looked down at him curiously.

"...Are you an X-man?" she asked.

"What? No. Why?" Answered a completely nonplussed Yuuta.

She pointed to his forehead.

Yuuta sighed loudly in frustration. "I want to speak to Keisuke. I'm a friend of his. Is he home?"

"Yes....he's just getting ready." She said, looking confused and retreating for a moment to call up the staircase to Nakamura. She invited Yuuta in, but he declined, preferring to stand on the deck. When he finally came out, he looked only mildly surprised to see Yuuta standing there, fuming.

"Can I help you?" he asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Yeah. You can give me my lousy money."

"Money?" Nakamura furrowed his brow like he was trying to remember something. "I don't know what you're talking about. I don't owe you."

"Yes, you do!" Yuuta seethed. "You forced me to touch a condom yesterday. I at least want the money you promised me!"

Nakamura frowned. "I'm really sorry bud, but no can do. You see, yesterday I went to the arcade after school and I spent all the money. I've got nothing to give you."

"You—" Yuuta mouthed wordlessly in fury at the older boy.

But then Nakamura's eyes lit up, as if with inspiration.

"However," he continued, "I've gotta, say, I feel really bad about the way things spanned out. I really do."

"You do?" Yuuta looked at him suspiciously.

"Yeah man. That was really mean of me. I feel terrible. I'd like to make it up to you. Hang on a sec." He disappeared into his house for a few minutes and returned holding two long, rectangular bright green boxes with smiley faces on them.

"What's this?" asked Yuuta, scrutinizing the boxes that looked very cheerful and inviting.

"Just some treats. Cookies." He replied. "My apologies. Please accept them."

"Well, okay." Said Yuuta moodily, putting them into his backpack. "You won't do anything like that again?"

"Wouldn't dream of it." He replied, smiling.

"Well, thanks man." Said Yuuta, suddenly feeling much happier.

"Sure thing." Nakamura smiled. Then he pointed over Yuuta's shoulder. "By the way, you just missed the bus."

XxXxXxXxXxXxXxxXxXxXx

Yuuta was in good spirits when he finally reached school, though he had had to walk because Nakamura said there wasn't enough space in his car. At least he had apologized. And now Yuuta had cookies!

He opened his backpack during recess to look at the cookies and wondered if he should eat them now. But then he saw Kazuko pass with one of her friends, running toward the swings, and he had a better idea. Taking one of the boxes out of his backpack, he cautiously approached the lovely Kazuko and cleared his throat to make his presence known. She turned out and said, "Oh, hi Yuuta-kun!" in a friendly way. Yuuta's heart lightened. She wasn't fazed by what had happened yesterday.

"H-hey Sato-san...I um....I got these cookies this morning as a gift and I was wondering if you'd like some!" He said it in a rush, blushing furiously.

"Really, Yuuta-kun? That's so nice of you! Isn't it, Aki?" She asked her friend.

"You both can have some!" Said Yuuta immediately, fumbling with the box. "In fact, all of your friends can!"

"Thank you so much!" she said, shooting him a dazzling smile as he tore the box open. The cookies were individually wrapped, in silver packaging, each with a different colored smiley face on them.

"They must be really yummy!" commented Aki happily.

As Yuuta began to dole them out, other girls noticed and came over and he ended up giving cookies to all of them, much to their delight.

"Thank you, Yuuta-kun!" they chorused.

"Anytime." He felt like his heart was swelling with joy.

Just then, the bell rang and he bade them farewell and scampered off to get his backpack and return to his own class.

XxXxXx

That evening, Yuuta arrived home feeling elated. The memory of Kazuko's smiling face did not fade easily. Maybe that Nakamura had done something right for once. Feeling contented, Yuuta flopped down on the couch and reached for the cookie box, realizing he hadn't tried them himself. He had given so many away, only a couple were left. He was sure his mother wouldn't mind if he ate just _one_ before dinner. He pulled one packet out of the box and unwrapped it.

Then he screamed.

XxXxXxXxXxXxXxxXxXxXxXxXxXxXx

The next morning, Yuuta stormed to Nakamura's house. Again. Nakamura answered the door this time. Probably he had been expecting him.

"Why Yuuta!" he said in mock-surprise. "To what do I owe this—

"Cut the crap!" Yuuta shouted. "What the hell is the meaning of this?"

Yuuta opened his backpack and pulled out the remaining cookie package. He tore it open and brandished what was inside for Nakamura to see, holding it between his thumb and forefinger.

It wasn't a cookie. It was a condom.

"Whoa there, Yuuta, what are you insinuating?" Said Nakamura, taking a step back.

"You bastard!" Yuuta cried. "How could you do this?! I handed these out to all the girls at school!"

"You _did_?" Nakamura dissolved into laughter, clutching the door frame for support. "Oh man, I'm sorry.......I thought you would notice the label...!"

"What!?" Yuuta turned the box over, and sure enough, there was a cream-colored box labeled, "Directions for Use".

"I HATE YOUR GUTS!" Yuuta bellowed. "YOU KNOW WHAT I DID LAST NIGHT? I HAD TO CALL EVERY SINGLE GIRL THAT I GAVE A COOKIE TO, _**INCLUDING**_ SATO-SAN AND APOLOGIZE INDIVIDUALLY!"

"Why didn't you tell them what happened?" asked Nakamura, still chuckling.

"WHY WOULD I?" he screamed. "IT'S BAD ENOUGH AS IT IS!"

"I can't believe this." Said Nakamura. "I could never have planned this out so well. You're even stupider than I thought."

"I'll get you for this, Nakamura! I swear it!" Yuuta ground his teeth.

"Okay, okay, but one thing first." He said.

"What?"

He pointed over Yuuta's shoulder.

XxXxXxXxXxXxXxxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXx

It goes without saying that Yuuta missed the bus again that day and had to walk to school alone.

But what he did at home one week later was most uncharacteristic.

Rather than his normal veg-out routine, Yuuta went straight to his room and locked the door. He didn't bother turning on the light, but lit the lamp on his desk and sat down at it with a piece of paper and a pen.

Yuuta's head was pounding with rage and humiliation, but he tried to clear away those thoughts. He needed a cool head for what he was about to do. Yuuta sucked in a deep breath and let it go in a whoosh.

Since the condom-cookie incident, Yuuta had been obsessively seeking out Nakamura's weaknesses, hoping to discover something that would help him get revenge. He went over a mental checklist of the things he had come up. Initially, the only thing on the list had been Mayuri Yasukawa.

But over the past week, something had happened. Yuuta had been out at the pool on Sunday with his mother and he had seen something that he probably shouldn't have.

Yuuta had gone into the changing rooms after swimming and had taken a shower. As he was shampooing his hair, however, someone whom he recognized came to the shower areas as well. Need we say who it was?

Nakamura had made some snide comments regarding Yuuta's scrawny body and then had proceeded to shower himself. And then Yuuta noticed it.....as the older boy was washing..... Something on Nakamura's body that had potential to be humiliating…

Yuuta stilled his shaking hand and lifted his pen.

_Dear Keisuke-kun, _he wrote

_This is Mayuri. I'm writing to tell you that I hate your guts. I hate your guts because you are lame and mean and also really really pathetic. You should get a life instead of always torturing little kids. And by the way, I've heard from a reliable source that you are uncircumcised. Ew. That's disgusting. Never talk to me again. I don't care if you're some sort of popular soccer-boy-hot-shot. I don't want to see you trying to impress me ever again, you uncircumcised, pathetic loser. _

_Sincerely, _

_Mayuri_

Yuuta lifted his pen. Yes. That seemed like a good letter. It was straightforward and he thought it seemed very believable. Mayuri could have easily written this.

Yuuta grinned evilly. Nakamura would be broken hearted and mortified after receiving this letter from the one he loved. He threw back his head and laughed, before folding up the letter and putting it inside an envelope. He would sneak this to Nakamura tomorrow. And _then_ they would see who the loser was.

XxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXx

By the looks of things, Nakamura received the letter around lunchtime. Yuuta had planted it in his backpack far before that, on the morning bus ride, but Nakamura had not retrieved it until midday.

Yuuta knew what had happened though, because when he was getting ready to exit the afternoon bus at his stop and he felt a tugging at the back of his jacket. Turning, he saw that Nakamura had a fistful of his jacket in a clamp.

"Stay here." Said Nakamura simply.

Not really caring, Yuuta shrugged and sat down. Probably heartbroken Nakamura needed someone to vent to.

Nakamura dismissed his friends with a wave of his hand.

"What's up, Nakamura?" Yuuta blurted out, unable to restrain himself. "Did you have a good day? I mean, was it excellent? Or did something really bad happen?"

Nakamura smiled mysteriously at these words. Strangely encouraged by his silence, Yuuta continued,

"I hope you had a good day. I mean to say—I hope you didn't have a bad day. Like, I hope you didn't get a letter from your crush saying she doesn't like you because you're uncircumcised or anything. Because that would be totally humiliating."

"It would, wouldn't it?" Commented Nakamura, leaning forward in his seat. "I think I would feel pretty sad if that happened."

Yuuta burst. "You're such a loser!" he cried. "Sitting here, whining about your lost love! You must have been _so _embarrassed."

"Embarrassed doesn't even begin to cover it. I was absolutely _desolate_." Oozed Nakamura.

"You had it coming, you bullying sycophant! Oh, and by the way, _I _sent that letter!" Yuuta cried.

"Yeah, I pretty much knew that from the beginning." Said Nakamura calmly, reclining in his seat.

"_What!?_" Yuuta was momentarily speechless. "What do you mean?"

"That's actually why I wanted to talk with you. I'm here to give it back." He rummaged through his backpack and produced the letter, handing it over to Yuuta.

"This is impossible!" Yuuta spluttered, unable to accept the letter or the truth. "How could you have known it was me?"

"Dude, it's written on the back of your report card." Said Nakamura, turning it over.

Yuuta said nothing, but slapped his forehead. _Drat! How could I have forgotten to write it on a fresh sheet of paper!? _He mentally berated himself. Another failed plan.

"It was a nice try." Continued Nakamura. "But way too early to beat me."

Yuuta snatched the letter back, blood pulsing in his temples. "This.....isn't over.....," he breathed.

"I figured." He said. "_Do_ try not to be so pathetic next time, though."

"That was unfair!" Yuuta howled. "You won by default because I was thwarted by one of my two weaknesses: transsexuals and fresh sheets of paper!"

Nakamura chuckled menacingly. "I look forward to future attempts." He said.

"You—you....." Yuuta was shaking badly.

"And by the way," he added, "you've now missed not only your stop, but the one after it and the one after _that_."

XxXxXxXxXxXx

It took Yuuta three hours to walk home.

He collapsed on his doorstep, too exhausted to even knock, but with a resolve that had never been stronger. It was on. Keisuke Nakamura was going _down_.

Eventually, when Yuuta's mother came outside to get the mail, she noticed her son curled up on the porch, fast asleep, and carried him in.

The next day was Saturday, so everyone slept in. Yuuta woke, surprised to find himself in his own bed and comfortable. Blinking blearily, he rolled over to one side and appreciated the sparkling sunlight pouring in through the window. There was a slight breeze and a cloudless sky. The tree outside his window waved their merry arms at him. Shimmering green and gold and red and orange......and purple and blue.

Wait.

Yuuta sat up. Since when did trees have blue leaves?

XxX

Yuuta stood on his front porch, clasping the side railing for support and trying not to vomit as he surveyed his yard.

No, he had not been teepee-ed. He had not even been egg-ed.

He had been condom-ed.

There were condoms of every color decorating his entire yard, from end to end. Horrible and moist, swaying in the lovely morning breeze, draped over the bushes, trees, mailbox, flowerbeds......

Yuuta thought he was going to puke. He ventured out into the yard a little further and saw a message written on the path to his house:

AND NEXT TIME, KEEP YOUR STATIONERY KIT WHERE IT BELONGS.

There it was. He should have known there would be a punishment for his failed attempt. Yuuta sank to his knees. In that moment, he felt completely jaded. He felt that there was nothing he could ever do that would be good enough to avenge himself against this sixth grader.

....

....

....

....But then he thought of his brother. He remembered how Syuusuke's eyes would light with a fire whenever he was challenged and he knew: this was not a place to back down. This was....only the beginning. Today there would be no fun and games. First thing, he would formulate his ultimate plan to destroy Keisuke Nakamura. For good.

Well, second thing. First thing would be to clean the garden before his mother and Syuusuke woke.

**XxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXx**

**One Week Later...  
**

Nakamura woke on Thursday morning at his usual time: after he had hit the snooze button three times. He rose, feeling in quite good spirits about the day ahead. Possibly he would pick up some girls, charm Mayuri a bit, make weekend plans....

His morning routine passed uneventfully; not even a knock was heard on the door from a fuming Yuuta. Yuuta had not come to his house to complain about his latest trick. Nakamura grinned evilly. _Served that little brat right. Trying to embarrass me in front of my friends…the fool…he must have finally given up. Haven't seen him here in more than a week. _

He ate waffles with yogurt on them for breakfast and brushed his teeth and combed his hair and donned his uniform. For once, Nakamura's sister wasn't hogging the bathroom and he was able to find his backpack in under ten minutes. Nakamura smiled. This day was already going well.

He went outside, contemplating whether to take the bus; he could always get a ride from his mother if he missed it, but if he took it, he could see Mayuri and maybe even pester that Yuuta brat a little more.

Pondering this, Nakamura's thoughts were interrupted by a growling noise. Turning, Nakamura saw his neighbor's dog, a little monster of a bulldog, surveying him and growling as he did so, straining at his chain. The dog was tied to the side of the house. Nakamura considered the animal for a moment before making up his mind to take the bait.

He swaggered up to the dog, careful to keep a distance from it greater than the chain's length.

"Hey there." He said, leaning down to speak to it. "You filthy little beast."

Though he knew the dog couldn't understand him, it was as if it could, for it made a yelping noise, and struggled against the chain again, trying to break free.

Nakamura laughed softly. "You're just a pathetic little beast. You think you're all powerful, but you can't even break a chain. You'll never do anything unless your master lets you."

The dog whined shrilly.

"Don't go all gung-ho on me now." Nakamura joked. He straightened up. "I can't stay and talk, I've got more important things to do than have a one-sided conversation with a creature as disgusting and flea-ridden as you."

Nakamura turned to leave. Teasing animals always made him feel satisfied. At that moment however, Nakamura heard a terrible noise. A rusty clanging noise.

The kind of noise that you hear when a chain has just broken loose from the side of a house.

Nakamura didn't even have time to turn around. He could hear the animal panting at his heels.

Nakamura ran for it. He forgot that he was a cool kid with a reputation to uphold and babes to charm. All that was left in his head was the knowledge that he had to preserve his lovely face.

And so he ran, screaming, across his front yard. The dog followed closely behind, yipping at his heels. He sprinted across the yard to the tree, in an attempt to climb it, but the dog reached him before he could climb out of reach. It leaped up and fastened its jaws around Nakamura's ankle. Nakamura howled in pain and jumped down, frantically swinging his leg to get rid of the beast that had latched on. He managed to swing his leg hard enough to send the dog flying. In the moment where the beast was recovering, Nakamura had a second to wonder why no one in his house could hear this and come help him, but then the dog got back up and with a ferocious yowl, came after him again.

There was no other way. He _had_ to get away from his house, at least to the other side of the street where there was a chance of escaping. Nakamura dodged the animal, leaped over his coiled garden hose and scampered off his driveway and into the street.

The moment that his foot landed on the pavement however, he lost his balance on something extremely slippery on the road and fell hard, landing on his elbows and knees. And then with the sound of the dog barking and his own screaming echoing in his ears, Nakamura heard one last sound—the squealing of tires trying to stop a vehicle when it was already too late.

XxXxXxXxXx

No, he didn't die.

When Nakamura awoke from his brief spell of unconsciousness, he found himself still lying on the pavement in front of his house, and in excruciating pain. He hoisted himself up on his elbows and looked down at his body. What he saw almost made him faint again. His legs were bloody messes, crumpled by the wheels of a vehicle, and looking up, Nakamura saw Yuuta standing over him, looking victorious, in front of the school bus. The kids from school who had been riding it were standing in the background looking utterly shell shocked.

"What now, mister popular? What now!?" Yuuta cried triumphantly. "Who's the pathetic loser now?"

Nakamura stared at the fifth grader. Could it be true? Could all of this morning's on-goings be attributed to this scrawny little kid?

".....what?" He began weakly.

"Ah, ah, silence!" Yuuta ordered. "I suppose you're wondering what's going on. Well, I'll enlighten you, my dim friend. When you destroyed my yard and left me, thinking that I had been defeated, you had apparently taken it for granted that I was any other pussy fifth grader. You forgot.....I am a FUJI!"

Nakamura stared at him. Yuuta smiled fiercely.

"When you thought that you had won, you forgot that I have one tremendous advantage over you: and that is that I know that you are an asshole. Last night, while you were preening before the mirror, I sneaked over to your neighbor's house and warned the nice old lady that lives there that there had been rumors of a burglar in this area. I told her she should be on guard and keep her watchdog outside for the night to scare off anyone. I trusted that if you saw that dog in the morning, you would be such a bastard that you would come and provoke it, causing it to chase you. It seems I was right. I also banked on the fact that you would get so desperate that you would attempt to run across the street in order to lose the dog. Knowing this, I arrived in your neighborhood early this morning and coated the ground before your driveway with fresh condoms. As I thought, in your hurry, you didn't notice them and you slipped on their lubricated-ness. Having already assumed this to be imminent, the only thing left to do was to decide how to hurt you. After giving the matter some thought, I realized that running you over with a school bus would be the most ironic, and therefore, hilarious. So all I had to do was hijack the school bus this morning after it picked me up. I have a special deal with the driver of this bus, and with a little reasoning, it was not hard to persuade him to run you over when we came by your house to "pick you up". Of course, the real challenge was the timing. I had to plan everything just right down to the second so the bus would hit you right after you slipped on the condoms."

Yuuta stopped for breath and everyone stared at him in dead silence. Nakamura looked down at his ruined legs, unable to move at all. "You.....did...._this_....to me...because of...my _pranks_?"

"Pretty much, yeah." Yuuta nodded.

"You're CRAZY!" Nakamura screamed. Then his eyes started to water with pain and he let out a sob. "My poor legs! How will I ever play soccer again?"

"Aww, is the baby crying?" Said Yuuta in a mocking voice. "Crybaby. I'll call the doctor, shall I?"

But an ambulance was already pulling up, for one of Nakamura's cronies had come to his senses and phoned 911 while Yuuta had been explaining what had happened.

"Oh my God!" cried the paramedics, leaping out of the ambulance and seeing Nakamura looking terrified and anguished. "Someone get a stretcher, quick!"

Immediately, a stretcher was brought out and Nakamura was slid onto it. He was still repeating, "How will I play soccer again?"

"It looks bad!" yelled one of the paramedics. "His right calf has been completely shattered! And who knows how high the injuries go? We'll have to cut off his pants!"

"_NO!_" screamed Nakamura, but it was too late. The paramedics tore off his pants to examine the wounds more clearly and everyone in the clearing got a clear view of Nakamura's lack of circumcision.

Mayuri screamed. "That's _disgusting_!" She cried, and ran away with several of her girlfriends.

Nakamura let out an anguished wail and started to cry.

And Yuuta?

_He threw back his head, no, he __craned his neck backwards until he had a clear view of the sky above and he laughed and laughed and laughed, clenching fists of victory above his head, until tears rolled down his cheeks and thought he might choke on his own mirth_..........

*******

**XxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXXxXxXxXxXxXxX**

*****  
**

.........Fifteen-year-old Yuuta stood before the group of his stunned friends, still laughing.

"Dude...." Shinji began, but then stopped. He didn't even know what to say.

"That was the most messed up story I've ever heard." Said Uchimura finally. "You're crazy."

"Why? Because I stood up for myself?" Yuuta challenged.

"Because you chased a guy with a dog, tripped him on condoms, ran him over with a bus, and exposed his lack of circumcision just for some stupid prank he played!" Cried Touji, looking quite alarmed.

"Seriously, that was the best thing that ever happened to you?" Asked Kirihara. "It kind of sounded more like the most tragic thing that ever happened to Keisuke Nakamura."

"What's the difference?" asked Yuuta. "He was a bastard. He got exactly what he deserved!"

And at that moment, everyone in the room saw something that had been eluding them since the first day they had met Yuuta. Kamio voiced it.

"Proof." He said.

"What?" asked Yuuta. "Proof of what?"

"Yuuta." Said Shinji. He looked at him directly in the eyes. "You are most _definitely_ related to Fuji Syuusuke."

"And I think we've all learned a good lesson," added Ichirou in a shaky voice.

"Yeah," agreed Kirihara. "_Don't get on Yuuta's bad side_."

Yuuta bowed to thunderous applause.

* * *

**oOoOo**

* * *

**A/N:**

Wow, you don't know how long that story has been in my system. Inspired by actual life experiences, south park, and of course, personal invention.  
This may be the last story, though I probably could be persuaded to write another if someone wanted.

**Don't forget to vote for your favorite story: the winner gets something, I promise! Vote Now! :) **


	12. Animes Only

**A/N** Remember at the beginning of the year when the Josei Shounan boys came into class but only Seigaku people could see them?

* * *

**~oOoOo~**

* * *

"Cool." Momoshiro stood up. "Can _I_ go now?"

"Don't think so, pal." Yuuta tripped Momoshiro or his way to the T.V. set. "Only one story per school allowed. Kaidoh already went."

"_What_!?" Momo cried. "Echizen got to go after Kaidoh! _He's_ a Seigaku-ian!"

"No, he's the Prince of Tennis." Shinji corrected, moving to take a sip of his drink but missing his mouth and spilling it down his front. "It's completely different. Being The Prince of Tennis is a category in itself."

"Betta' recognize." Garbled Echizen from the ping-pong table.

"But this isn't _fair_!" Momoshiro whined. "I have a really good one!"

"Then blame Kaidoh for wasting your school's story! Shouted Uchimura. "You really should have thought of that before telling such a retarded story!"

"My story was better than Choutarou's!" Kaidoh attempted to defend himself.

"Screw you, Kaidoh. It was ten times worse." Snapped Momoshiro. "And now there's no one from our school except that phony Echizen to represent us!"

Momoshiro angrily stalked back to his seat, though he tripped over his own feet on the way.

No one from Seigaku would talk to Kaidoh for the rest of the evening.

"Well, is that all the schools?" Yuuta asked.

"No! cried Aoi immediately. "Yamabuki didn't go!"

"Then let's get…" Yuuta trailed off as his eyes fell on Touji and Ichiuma, both of whom were passed out under the coffee table. "I guess Yamabuki's out of the running."

"Question!" asked Aoi in his annoyingly loud voice. "Since Yamabuki didn't tell a story, could we give their time slot to someone else? Say, me?"

"Hmmm" Yuuta thought. "That sounds reasonable I suppose. Very well, you may tell a story, Aoi."

"WHAT!?" Momoshiro exploded, rising to his feet. "You SAID that no school can tell two stories! Aoi and David are both from Rokkaku and David already WENT."

"If the story's in a foreign language it doesn't count." Said Kirihara smoothly.

"Well if we're going to look at it like that, then shouldn't IDIOTIC stories not count!?" Momoshiro shouted, jerking his thumb at Kaidoh. "Seigaku should get to tell another story too!"

"Idiotic stories count because idiocy is a choice." Kamio explained. "David couldn't _help it_ if he could only speak French at the moment."

"Sorry Momoshiro, but those are the rules." Said Ichirou.

"I can't believe this!" Momoshiro snarled. "It's obvious that you're just trying to keep me from telling a story!"

"Well, you see Momoshiro, we don't like you." Said Shinji delicately. "We want to make you upset. We want it very much."

"What?" Momoshiro's voice dropped to normal speaking level, thrown by this statement. "You guys…don't like me? …Why?"

"Your hair." Said Choutarou immediately. "It's too square."

"Too damn square." Kamio agreed.

"Would it kill you to get a normal haircut?" Hiyoshi asked.

"Shut up, Hiyoshi we don't like you either. Said Ishida.

"But I can't help it!" Momoshiro said, close to tears. "My hair just grows like this!"

"Yeah, and weird black things just _come_ out of Oishi's forehead." Said Kirihara.

"I can't believe this!" Momo blubbered. "You guys are so shallow!"

"Who thinks this conversation has gone on long enough?" Kamio inserted in a bored voice.

Everyone but Momoshiro raised his hand.

"You guys don't like _anyone_ from Seigaku!" Momoshiro accused, pointing to all the non-Seigaku boys. "You just _take turns_ insulting each of us!"

No one was listening to Momoshiro anymore, though. They had started talking amongst themselves.

Since no one could really remember what they had been talking about, and anyway they were bored of being drunk, Aoi didn't actually end up telling his story.

"Let's just pick a winner for best story and be done with this evening." Volunteered Yuuta.

"How do you plan on doing that?" asked Kamio.

"I dunno, just everyone close your eyes and then we'll vote for the best story."

"What does the winner get?"

"Who cares? The winner can kick Ryoma in the crotch, I guess….."

"Hey!" Ryoma suddenly seemed a little more sober.

"….or maybe you'll just get some sort of prize in later chapters."

"Fair enough." Said Shinji. "Let's vote."

They all shut their eyes. There was silence in the room for a few minutes. Then Shinji slit his eyes open.

"Shouldn't there be someone with their eyes open to count the votes?" he asked cautiously.

"OH! You're so right; I totally forgot!" said Yuuta. "Not everyone can close his eyes! We need someone impartial to count votes."

"I'll do it." Touji said.

So they all closed their eyes again. This time, Kirihara fell asleep while doing so.

"Okay, this isn't working!" Touji said frustratedly, after dumping his fifth bucket of water over Kirihara to revive him. "Let's just write our votes down on paper and turn them in!"

"Fine." Everyone chorused and did so in less than thirty seconds.

Touji quickly counted. "Okay, Yuuta wins." He said. "By a vote of 100 percent."

"That doesn't even make sense!" cried Ichirou. "I'm not complaining, but _I _didn't vote for him, and I know for a _fact_ that Kaidoh voted for himself!"

"Screw you." Said Kaidoh.

"Are you sure you didn't mess up?" Shinji asked. "I mean, did you count right?"

"Of course I did." Said Touji acidly. "It says that Yuuta is the winner right here on this little paper."

"Where did you get that paper?" asked Shinji.

Touji thought. He put one hand to his chin. "You know, now that you mention it, I don't really know."

"I think something fishy is going on." Said Shinji. "Like someone not in this room is somehow controlling the ballot, but I don't really care enough to find out."

"Okay." Said Touji. "So Yuuta wins. Or something. Yay."

"Yay." Said everyone tonelessly.

Then they all lay down and didn't talk anymore.

XxX

Half and hour later, the door to the game room opened and in walked Kajimoto and Shinjou.

"What is _wrong_ with that door?" Kirihara wondered aloud. "It doesn't stay shut." He swaggered over and kicked it closed with his foot.

"I heard that you guys had beer." Kajimoto didn't even bother to say hello. "And we want in." Shinjou nodded mutely next to him.

"It's on the table," Echizen muttered wearily, rubbing his eyes.

"What's on the table?" Yuuta asked curiously, looking over at Echizen.

"The beer!" Echizen snapped.

"Geez…relax" Yuuta mumbled.

"Excellent." Shinjou and Kajimoto each got their cans and came back to Echizen, flopping down on either side of him.

"Having a good school year so far?" Kajimoto asked, snapping the tab of his beer open with his teeth.

"Ehh…." Echizen lifted one hand and let it fall heavily again. "You know. Prince of Tennis and all that."

Next to him, Momoshiro stirred and sat up, rubbing his eyes as well.

"Man, that was a good nap, I really should—

He suddenly caught sight of Shinjou and Kajimoto. "Well, well….if it isn't animes only. How nice of you to drop by."

Everyone in the room except for Echizen and the two Josei Shonan boys stared at Momoshiro.

"Funny you should mention that," Shinjou said suddenly. "Kajimoto and I actually have a theory that we'd like your input on."

"We have been thinking," Kajimoto's affirmed.

"I didn't know you could think." Echizen muttered.

"Everyone thinks, Echizen." Choutarou said.

"Quelques gens pensent que les cornichons sont déliciuex."(1) David added unexpectedly.

"And we THINK," Kajimoto snapped, "that the reason only Seigaku people can see us is precisely _because_ we're anime only."

Both Momoshiro and Echizen were quiet for a moment, digesting this interesting idea and trying to decide how best to respond. Echizen finally answered.

"That is _the_ stupidest thing I've ever heard in my life, and my best friend is Horio." He said. He didn't say anything more. He didn't have to.

"Hey…. What's that supposed to mean?" Horio stirred feebly from the freshman-now-second-years-trio pile on the floor.

Momoshiro, however, was looking like he believed every word.

"So…..would seeing you guys, who no one else can see, technically be like seeing ghosts?" he questioned slowly.

"What the hell are you talking about?" Kamio snapped groggily. "Momoshiro, do you make it a _habit _to wildly converse with yourself?"

"I guess, in a way, yes." Shinjou agreed.

"Then why are you doing this?" Momoshiro whispered, pallid, before falling into a drunken stupor on Kaidoh's legs.

Echizen sighed angrily. Despite what he had witnessed on the first day of school, he didn't _seriously_ believe that no one could see Josei Shounan boys except Seigaku kids. "Momoshiro's a moron. And everyone _can_ see you, all the time."

"I'll agree with the first statement," said Kamio, "but that second one is just creepy. Who's watching me all the time?"

"They _all_ see you!" Echizen shouted at Kajimoto and Shinjou, waving his hand at the rest of the people in the room.

"Echizen, seriously, you're just being a freak now, like Momoshiro." Kamio said.

"KAMIO!" Echizen shouted. "You see Kajimoto and Shinjou here, right?" He pointed simultaneously to the boys flanking him.

"Uhm…." Kamio stared.

"Yes, yes, of course we see them!" Choutarou cried, getting to his feet and walking over, while muttering quietly to Kamio, "don't worry, he's just had too much to drink…"

"I heard that!" Echizen was getting seriously annoyed. He turned desperately to Yuuta. "You see them, don't you?" he half pleaded.

"Er," Yuuta seemed rather surprised at having his opinion asked. "…Yes, of course I do." He stood up. "I'll just get them drinks, shall I?"

Yuuta wobbled over to the drinks table and got two new beers and headed over towards where he thought Echizen was imagining the two boys to be. Which was a spot about twenty feet to the left of where they really were.

"They're over HERE!" Echizen felt like crying. Why was everyone messing with him?

Yuuta sighed, deciding not to humor Echizen anymore. "Listen," he said, "it's been a long night, we should all just get to—

"BUT THEY'RE RIGHT HERE! _YOU_ SAW THE DOOR OPEN! THEY'RE IN HERE, I'M TELLING YOU!" Echizen lost control.

Yuuta laughed gently. "Echizen, it's alright," he cooed, "we've all had a lot to drink. You should really get some rest. Kabaji." The last word was directed at the hunk of a teenager who had sat there quietly hiccupping all evening.

"Usu." He got up, walked over to Echizen, picked the smaller boy up, slung him over his shoulder and slowly made his way out of the room.

"I'M NOT DRUNK!" Echizen screamed. "THEY'RE HERE, I TELL YOU!"

Shinjou and Kajimoto smiled cheerily at him and waved as Kabaji reached the doorway.

"THEY'RE SMILING AND WAVING! YOU CAN SEE THEIR SMUG FACES IF YOU JUST LOOK! I'M TELLING YOU, THEY EXIST—"

The remaining conscious people in the game room could still hear Echizen's muted screams two corridors away.

* * *

**oOoOo**

* * *

P.S. I actually did sort of write a story thing for Aoi, but I didn't feel like putting it in. If you review, I'll send it to you:) Or you can just ask if you want it, I'll hand it over.


	13. Eight Month Nap

Eight Month Sleep Followed By A Nap

**

* * *

~oOoOo~**

* * *

Yuuta rubbed his at his eyes. They felt like they were stuck together with glue, as if he hadn't used them in years. After a considerable effort, he managed to slowly peel them apart and the world around him took form shyly.

"Good morning, Yuuta-sempai!"

Yuuta jumped about a mile into the air. Waking up to Kachiro and Katsuo staring at him five inches away from his face was not his idea of a good morning.

"What the hell are you doing?!" he cried, scrambling around and sitting up as a major pain shot through his head. "…where am I? Wha-what's going on?"

"Don't worry about it; it's normal," said Shinji. He had just stumbled into the room in cookie-patterned pajamas, holding a cup of coffee and looking as though nothing were amiss in the world. "After all, you've been asleep for more than eight months. A person could have like, gotten pregnant and had a baby and you would have been asleep through the whole thing. In fact, that probably _did_ happen somewhere…" he trailed off, thinking.

"I'm sorry—eight—_eight_ months?" Yuuta croaked, his whole face turning white and his eyes widening. He shook his head vigorously. "No. You can't be—"

"No, I'm not strictly serious, and I don't know what I mean by that either, so don't ask," Shinji said. He plunked himself down on the arm of an armchair, taking a sip of his coffee. "Sorry you had to wake up those two, but I couldn't carry you back to the room last night; you're too heavy and anyway, I was really tired…"

Yuuta unsteadily got to his feet and realized for the first time that he was in the game room. He had been sleeping on the ping-pong table.

"Eight months and no one could even bring me a _pillow_?" Yuuta asked incredulously, while Shinji and the freshmen looked a little abashed. "You guys have got to be kidding me!"

"Yo!" Choutarou had suddenly walked in, looking bright as a fresh day and carrying his school bag over his shoulder. "I was wondering where everyone was. You know, we're supposed to be in class right now."

"Wait a minute, what time is it?" Yuuta asked, still totally disoriented.

"Two o'clock in the afternoon." Choutarou cheerfully replied. "Kamio and Kirihara just left for detention half an hour ago."

"We took the afternoon off to see how you were doing," Katsuo said, speaking for the first time. "You seemed out pretty hard last night—"

Yuuta wasn't listening. He felt like his memory was on fast-forward. There were pumpkin patches, Ouran High School Host Club students, Santa Clauses, kittens, and pool balls flooding his mind.

"Hang on. What time did you say it was?" Yuuta asked rubbing his forehead and scrunching up his eyes.

"It's now two minutes past two in the afternoon," said Kachirou.

"I…..WHAT?!" Yuuta shouted, as these numbers suddenly computed. "For the love of—holy _shit_! I have to get to class! I'm going to have like five thousand years of make-up work to do! Jesus Christ, I have to move!" he bolted off the ping pong table and flew out of the game room, returning thirty seconds later with a toothbrush sticking out of his mouth and his books under his arm.

"Yuuta-sempai, take it easy—" Katsuo tried to calm him, but it was to no avail, for Yuuta wasn't even listening.

"I can't believe this is happening to me!" Yuuta shouted, voice muffled, as he roughly forced a sweater over his head. "I am so unbelievably late, it's not even funny!"

He finished putting on the sweater and strode towards the exit, smoothing down his hair as he tightened his tie.

"Hey, wait a minute…" Yuuta said, almost solely to himself. He stopped abruptly, hands still on his collar. He slowly turned around.

There was a pause of about ten seconds as Yuuta looked around the room at his classmates with a furrowed brow.

"You know what?" said Yuuta, "Screw this. I haven't slept on a mattress in eight months! I don't have to go to class!"

And instead of taking the turn to leave the dormitory, he instead went the other direction, ambling into his room, presumably to take a nice, comfortable nap.

Everyone in the game room stared after him in astonishment.

"I don't _believe_ it," said Choutarou finally, shocked. "Who was it that bet that the first thing Yuuta would do when he woke up was take a nap?"

Shinji raised his hand.

Choutarou shook his head and mouthed wordlessly in disbelief. Then he pulled five bucks out of his pocket and handed them to Shinji.

* * *

~oOoOo~

* * *

**A/N **

I can't believe it's been more than eight months since I updated this story. That's kind of ridiculous.

Hey, do you want to know a fun fact? Getting to Know You was originally one chapter. Can you believe that? I still don't know how it broke into six pieces.

Very short chapter here; I'm just going to ease back into it! ;D


	14. Venting Time

Scene 1: _Kirihara, Kamio; a dungeon in the depths of their detentions_

"You stay in here. You don't speak, you don't move, you don't make noise."

Behind her, Kirihara was mouthing the words to Mrs. Shiosake's mini-speech that both of them had memorized. Kamio fought a smile. The way she abused them had really almost become amusing in a way.

"Funny, is it?" Her temper instantly flared at the look on Kamio's face.

"No, ma'am," said Kamio. Then he changed his mind. "Actually, yeah it kind of is."

"_What?_" squawked the woman, blanching. "You dare speak to me like—"

"Leave him alone, Hag." Kirihara brought the attention to himself.

She spluttered and turned now to face Kirihara who was observing her nonchalantly, comfortably reclined.

"You boys are really in for it now!"

"What are you going to do? Give us detention?" asked Kamio. Both he and Kirihara burst into laughter.

The woman didn't know who to shout at first. She chose Kamio. "I understand that brat behaving this way!" she yelled, jerking her thumb at Kirihara, "but what has possessed you, Kamio, to behave so badly?"

"Mostly the realization that there's nothing more you can take from me."

"More like do _for_ me," said Kirihara, who rather enjoyed being on detention with Kamio.

"You boys don't—"

"Know what we've gotten ourselves into," chorused Kamio and Kirihara together.

"We know." said Kirihara. "Why don't you go tell the principal on us now?"

The woman screamed and ran out of the room. Quick as lightning, Kirihara raced to the door and slammed it behind her, bolting it from the inside so that she couldn't get back in. "Brilliant, Akira!" he said hoarsely, spinning back around.

But Kamio was staring at his desk in shock and didn't notice the use of the first name. "I can't believe I did that," he said. "I've never talked to a teacher like that before."

"It's a good thing." Kirihara assured him. "Since the first day I met you, I've known that with your guts and a little training, you could be a master of the Badass Arts."

"What the hell are we going to do now?" Kamio started to panic. "She's probably gone to get the principal or something!"

"Yeah, that's where I sent her," Kirihara replied calmly, strolling to the other side of the room. "We should probably break out of here or something."

"Break _ou_t? How?"

"Maybe through here." Kirihara stopped and looked up at the ceiling, examining the large tiles with educated interest as he rubbed his chin. "If we can get rid of this tile, we can probably climb out through the ventilation shaft. That way, if and when she comes back in, we'll be gone and since no other teachers will have seen us leaving the room, the principal won't even believe her that we were ever here! They'll all think she made up the whole story! We just open the ceiling, climb through, replace the tile, and leave no marks as to where we disappeared to!"

Kamio stared at him. "You're crazy!"

"Have you _met_ Mrs. Shiosake?"

Kamio considered this for a moment and realized that Kirihara had a point. "Fine then, how do we get out?"

Kirihara was way ahead of him. He hurriedly lifted and balanced chair on top of a desk and precariously climbed on top. He stood still for a minute to gather his balance, then straightened up. Directly below the tile in question, he reached up and cautiously wiggled it out of place, pushing it up and out to reveal a gaping hole in the ceiling.

"I can't believe that actually worked," Kamio watched in surprise.

"I'll go up first to make sure it's alright. Then you come," Kirihara ordered. He stuck his arms into the ceiling up to his elbows and managed to hoist himself up and out of sight.

"OH GOD!" he screamed, once up there.

"What!? What is it? Is there something up there?" shouted Kamio, worried.

Kirihara poked his head down, beaming. "No, I was just kidding, there's nothing up here. You can come."

Kamio threw his backpack at Kirihara's face, though the latter managed to catch it and retreated inside without it.

"Just a minute!" called Kamio. "If we're supposed to be leaving this room without a trace, then what are we going to do about the chair on the desk?"

"Put it back on the floor and come up without it."

"I can't reach then!" Kamio shouted, though he moved the chair back to the floor and stood on the desk.

"I'll get you."

Kirihara stuck his long arms out and seized Kamio around the waist.

"What the hell are you doing? Get off!"

"I've got you, Kamio dearest."

"What's _wrong_ with you?"

Kirihara hoisted Kamio into the ceiling in his strange manner. "Sorry, but it was a desperate situation. If you want extra, you'll have to meet me later when I have time," said Kirihara, replacing the tile.

Kamio scratched at his violated waist, while angrily watching the tile job.

"What now?" he demanded?

"Now?" Once Kirihara had replaced the tile, it was pretty dark in the shaft. "Now we follow our senses."

"There's no fucking way this is going to work."

"Yes, a little leap of faith; that's what I like about you…"

The two started to crawl uncertainly in the dark.

XxXxXxXxX

Scene II:_ Choutarou, Hiyoshi, Katsuo, Kachirou, Yuuta, Shinji, Touji, Mori, Ichiuma, Ichirou; sitting around in dorm lounge_

"For God's sake, don't we have something _better _to do?!" Touji finally snapped as he watched Ichiuma finish to cut all the toenails on his left foot and make a neat little pile on the coffee table.

"We're supposed to be doing our homework, Touji," Choutarou pointed out earnestly, looking up from his biology book. "We have a test tomorrow—"

"Screw tomorrow!" Touji shouted, flailing his arms and standing up. "This is so stupid! I might as well have stayed at Fudomine for this! Why aren't more important things going on?"

"What could be more important than ribosomes?" Choutarou asked reasonably.

"Like…talking about things that normal teenage boys talk about!" Touji cried, his enthusiasm flailing. "Like getting laid!"

"Laid?" Ichirou echoed.

"Lain," Touji shrugged.

"Lied," Choutarou suggested.

"Lay? Now you've got me all confused!" Touji snapped. "Who cares? The point is, this is supposed to be what we care about! I say we make a pact: at the end of this year, we'll all lose our virginity. We've got to--we've been waiting for this since we hit puberty!"

"That was two weeks ago," Ichiuma reminded him.

"If everyone will excuse me, I just have a theoretical question for the general public," Mori suddenly interrupted, causing everyone to look at him. "And it's just a purely theoretical question, by the way. So don't take it non-theoretically, because that would be wrong. It would be the opposite of right."

"For the love of God, what _is _it!?" everyone snapped.

"How does one get into the market of buying harems?" Mori asked.

"Buying harems?" they all looked at him like he was crazy. "Are you nuts?"

"I told you I meant theoretically. How do you think it could be done?"

"Well, you'd have to have loads of cash," said Shinji after a very long silence in the room. "The first step is to get a job. And that's never going to happen."

"Why say that?" Mori frowned.

"Well, just judging from the fact that in your last job you were employed as a cupboard—"

"Dude!" Mori snapped, blushing furiously. "You said you wouldn't tell anyone about that!"

"You worked as a _cupboard_?" Ichiuma asked in disbelief.

"It was a summer job," Mori said defensively.

"But how do you get employed as cupboard? What are your responsibilities? Do I even want to know…?" Touji asked himself.

Fortunately however, Mori was spared having to answer because at that moment everyone was distracted by the occurrence of two people falling through the ceiling of the lounge.

"Holy Suzuki!" Touji screamed through the crashing, scuffling, and shouting noises that filled the room as two dirty figures lay crumpled on the floor.

When the dust settled down, the two figures rose, griping and brushing themselves off. Kamio was repeating "can't believe I did that, can't believe I did that" over and over again.

"Kamio? Kirihara?" Choutarou cried in amazement. "Are you guys all right?!"

They exchanged looks. "Yeah, we're dandy," said Kirihara.

"That looked like a pretty nasty fall," said Ichiuma. "And I can't find my toenails anymore."

"Do you guys need first aid or something?" Shinji asked calmly. "I have a kit and all that just in the next room—"

"Isn't anyone going to ask us why we were in the fucking CEILING?" Kamio finally shouted, overwhelmed by the density, or perhaps just utter lack of curiosity of his friends.

"Oh yeah. Why were you in the ceiling?" Shinji asked casually.

"Because I'm now going to be in the hugest trouble in the history of the world!" Kamio screamed. The adrenaline was wearing off and he had gone back into freak-out mode.

"I guess that answers the next question on my list," Choutarou said softly, looking down.

"Wait, I don't get it still; what happened to you guys?" Touji asked, totally bewilderment.

"We escaped detention," Kirihara said plainly.

I took a moment for the meaning of these words to fully enter the brains of everyone in the room. When they did, it took another moment for them to find their tongues.

"You…_what?_" Hiyoshi finally asked on behalf of everybody.

"Ran away! We ran away!" Kamio supplied semi-hysterically, rubbing furiously at his gray hair and causing a cloud of dust to shower down. "And something tells me that we're completely _screwed_ now, so if you'll let me go kill myself in peace…" he trailed off and strode out of the room, presumably to go commit suicide or take a shower. We're not sure which.

"Ah, he'll come around," said Kirihara proudly. "He's just nervous; it's his first time breaking out and running and all that."

"Well, what do you guys plan to do about it?" Shinji pressed. "I mean, Mrs. Shiosake will definitely come after you, won't she?"

"It's Miss," said Kirihara.

"Ah," said Shinji. "That makes sense."

"Yeah. And anyway, it'll be okay; I've got a plan."

"What is it?" Touji asked.

"Check this:" Kirihara smiled triumphantly, looking like he was about to say something sharp. "_Nothing_."

A pause.

"…nothing?" Choutarou clarified, wondering if he had missed something.

"Nothing!" said Kirihara. "We'll do nothing! Just act like it didn't happen at all! It works wonders; I'm telling you!"

They exchanged skeptical looks, wondering if doing nothing could really be a solution to a problem like this.

"Haven't you noticed yet that we don't do anything in this story?" Kirihara pointed out. "I mean, we don't actually ever take care of things? If there's a problem we just wait until a bigger problem comes along and makes the first problem seem small in comparison! That's how we deal with our issues!"

"It's kind of true…." Choutarou admitted, thinking about how the chaos at orientation had been interrupted by the earthquake and the whole problem with the first set of detentions had been ignored after everyone got drunk and kidnapped an adult.

"Well, if that's all, I'm going to go take a shower now," Kirihara said, brushing off his dusty sleeves one last time. Then he suddenly frowned and reached into his hair.

He groped for a moment through his curls and pulled a few things out. Ichiuma gulped.

"Hey, whose toenails are these?" Kirihara asked.

But once again Ichiuma was spared because the door to the lounge opened and everyone jumped back in alarm. For the first time that year, the principal entered, looking a little disgruntled.

"Okay…" he said while everyone looked on in shock. "Where are Kirihara and Kamio?"

Kirihara tried inching towards the exit, hoping his dusty exterior would camoflauge him, but the principal spied him.

"YOU! I've gotten word from Ms. Shiosake that you…" he paused and took out a piece of paper. "Threw a fit and behaved abnormally rude," he read in a mechanical voice.

"I—what?" Kirihara asked in feigned innocence, while Touji, Ichiuma and Ichirou stuffed their fists in their mouths to keep from laughing. "That's ridiculous! We weren't even on detention today! She must be crazy."

"Mrs. Shiosake came to the office, Son," the principal said seriously. "Do you really expect me to take your word over hers?"

"But...Mr. Principal-sir," said Kirihara, since he had never learned the principal's name. "Go to the classroom, really! It'll be locked, like all classrooms are on Monday afternoons! And you can ask my friends here; they all vouch that I've been in the dorm all morning!"

At this point, Touji fell out of his seat shaking with silent laughter, but the principal just figured that he was having a seizure and so he didn't bother to do anything about it. He thought over what Kirihara had said.

"Hmmm…." The principal, rubbed his chin pensively while Kirihara crossed his fingers and looked triumphantly at the others in the room. "You're sure about this?" the principal clarified.

"As sure as I am that Echizen's a closet queer," Kirihara said.

"And your friends vouch you were here."

"We do!" Katsuo and Kachirou interjected enthusiastically, hoping this would make them more popular with the upperclassmen.

There was another pause.

"You may have a point," the principal said finally. "Perhaps Mrs. Shiosake is a little under the weather. I'll look into this point more carefully later. Until then, you're off the hook."

"Thank you sir," said Kirihara, barely containing his own laughter as the principal turned to leave the room and most of his friends were now gaping in disbelief. Who would have thought that Kirihara was such a master of deception?

Kirihara started doing a victory dance behind the principals back, but just before the principal left the room, he suddenly stopped and whipped around quickly. Kirihara stopped dancing.

"Hey, wait a minute!" the principal shouted sharply, as if a something important had suddenly occurred to him.

"What?" said Kirihara nervously, taking a step back. Had the principal realized that his story was all bullshit?

"Why is there a hole in the ceiling!?" the principal cried, pointing to the hole directly over Kirihara's head.

"Oh…that? It's…um…" Kirihara couldn't think of anything fast enough.

"That's damage to brand new school property, young man!" the principal shouted, wagging his finger as the rest of the boys in the room really started laughing. "You're coming to my office! NOW!"

"Awwwww…." Kirihara groaned as the principal grabbed him by the ear and steered him out of the room, leaving all the rest of the boys within besides themselves with laughter.

* * *

ooo

* * *

ah, the irony of rules

yay for random conversations


End file.
